such arguments as occurred
to my thoughts, and which my present condition furnished me plentifully
with; and particularly, as the most effectual method, I resolved to
divert myself with other things, and to engage in some business that
might effectually tie me up from any more excursions of this kind; for I
found the thing return upon me chiefly when I was idle, had nothing to
do, or any thing of moment immediately before me.

To this purpose I bought a little farm in the county of Bedford, and
resolved to remove myself thither. I had a little convenient house upon
it, and the land about it I found was capable of great improvement, and
that it was many ways suited to my inclination, which delighted in
cultivating, managing, planting, and improving of land; and
particularly, being an inland country, I was removed from conversing
among ships, sailors, and things relating to the remote part of
the world.

In a word, I went down to my farm, settled my family, bought me ploughs,
harrows, a cart, waggon, horses, cows, sheep; and setting seriously to
work, became in one half year a mere country gentleman; my thoughts were
entirely taken up in managing my servants, cultivating the ground,
enclosing, planting, &c.; and I lived, as I thought, the most agreeable
life that nature was capable of directing, or that a man always bred to
misfortunes was capable of being retreated to.

I farmed upon my own land, I had no rent to pay, was limited by no
articles; I could pull up or cut down as I pleased; what I planted was
for myself, and what I improved, was for my family; and having thus left
off the thoughts of wandering, I had not the least discomfort in any
part of my life, as to this world. Now I thought indeed, that I enjoyed
the middle state of life which my father so earnestly recommended to me,
a kind of heavenly life, something like what is described by the poet
upon the subject of a country life:

Free from vices, free from care,
Age has no pains, and youth no snare.

But in the middle of all this felicity, one blow from unforeseen
Providence unhinged me at once; and not only made a breach upon me,
inevitable and incurable, but drove me, by its consequence, upon a deep
relapse into the wandering disposition; which, as I may say, being born
in my very blood, soon recovered its hold of me, and, like the returns
of a violent distemper, came on with an irresistible force upon me; so
that nothing could make any mor