He furnished our house with all the elegance of fashionable expense, and
was careful to conceal his bounties, lest the poverty of his family
should be suspected.
At length it happened that, by misconduct like our own, a large estate,
which had been purchased from us, was again exposed to the best bidder.
My uncle, delighted with an opportunity of reinstating the family in
their possessions, came down with treasures scarcely to be imagined in a
place where commerce has not made large sums familiar, and at once drove
all the competitors away, expedited the writings, and took possession.
He now considered himself as superior to trade, disposed of his stock,
and as soon as he had settled his economy, began to shew his rural
sovereignty, by breaking the hedges of his tenants in hunting, and
seizing the guns or nets of those whose fortunes did not qualify them
for sportsmen. He soon afterwards solicited the office of sheriff, from
which all his neighbours were glad to be reprieved, but which he
regarded as a resumption of ancestral claims, and a kind of restoration
to blood after the attainder of a trade.
My uncle, whose mind was so filled with this change of his condition,
that he found no want of domestick entertainment, declared himself too
old to marry, and resolved to let the newly-purchased estate fall into
the regular channel of inheritance.
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