to discharge his reckoning.

Mr. Savage related another fact equally uncommon, which, though it
has no relation to his life, ought to be preserved. Sir Richard Steele
having one day invited to his house a great number of persons of the
first quality, they were surprised at the number of liveries which
surrounded the table; and after dinner, when wine and mirth had set them
free from the observation of a rigid ceremony, one of them inquired of
Sir Richard how such an expensive train of domestics could be consistent
with his fortune. Sir Richard very frankly confessed that they were
fellows of whom he would very willingly be rid. And being then asked
why he did not discharge them, declared that they were bailiffs, who had
introduced themselves with an execution, and whom, since he could not
send them away, he had thought it convenient to embellish with liveries,
that they might do him credit while they stayed. His friends were
diverted with the expedient, and by paying the debt, discharged their
attendance, having obliged Sir Richard to promise that they should never
again find him graced with a retinue of the same kind.

Under such a tutor, Mr. Savage was not likely to learn prudence or
frugality; and perhaps many of the misfortunes which the want of those
virtues brought upon him in the following parts of his life, might be
justly imputed to so unimproving an example. Nor did the kindness of Sir
Richard end in common favours. He proposed to have established him in
some settled scheme of life, and to have contracted a kind of alliance
with him, by marrying him to a natural daughter, on whom he intended
to bestow a thousand pounds. But though he was always lavish of future
bounties, he conducted his affairs in such a manner that he was very
seldom able to keep his promises, or execute his own intentions; and,
as he was never able to raise the sum which he had offered, the marriage
was delayed. In the meantime he was officiously informed that Mr. Savage
had ridiculed him; by which he was so much exasperated that he withdrew
the allowance which he had paid him, and never afterwards admitted him
to his house.

It is not, indeed, unlikely that Savage might by his imprudence expose
himself to the malice of a talebearer; for his patron had many follies,
which, as his discernment easily discovered, his imagination might
sometimes incite him to mention too ludicrously. A little knowledge of
the world is sufficient to discover t