he world to have been so predominant in my
thoughts, should be worn out, the volatile part be fully evacuated, or
at least condensed, and I might at sixty-one years of age have been a
little inclined to stay at home, and have done venturing life and
fortune any more.

Nay farther, the common motive of foreign adventures was taken away in
me; for I had no fortune to make, I had nothing to seek: if I had gained
ten thousand pounds, I had been no richer; for I had already sufficient
for me, and for those I had to leave it to, and that I had was visibly
increasing; for having no great family, I could not spend the income of
what I had, unless I would set up for an expensive way of living, such
as a great family, servants, equipage, gaiety, and the like, which were
things I had no notion of, or inclination to; so that I had nothing
indeed to do, but to sit still, and fully enjoy what I had got, and see
it increase daily upon my hands.

Yet all these things, had no effect upon me, or at least not enough to
resist the strong inclination I had to go abroad again, which hung about
me like a chronical distemper; particularly the desire of seeing my new
plantation in the island, and the colony I left there, ran in my head
continually. I dreamed of it all night, and my imagination ran upon it
all day; it was uppermost in all my thoughts, and my fancy worked so
steadily and strongly upon it, that I talked of it in my sleep; in
short, nothing could remove it out of my mind; it even broke so
violently into all my discourses, that it made my conversation tiresome;
for I could talk of nothing else, all my discourse ran into it, even to
impertinence, and I saw it myself.

I have often heard persons of good judgment say, that all the stir
people make in the world about ghosts and apparitions, is owing to the
strength of imagination, and the powerful operation of fancy in their
minds; that there is no such thing as a spirit appearing, or a ghost
walking, and the like; that people's poring affectionately upon the past
conversation of their deceased friends so realizes it to them, that they
are capable of fancying upon some extraordinary circumstances that they
see them, talk to them, and are answered by them, when, in truth, there
is nothing but shadow and vapour in the thing; and they really know
nothing of the matter.

For my part, I know not to this hour whether there are any such things
as real apparitions, spectres, or walking of p