But we had
peculiar advantages, which encouraged us to hope, that we should by
degrees supplant our competitors. My father, by his profession, made
himself necessary in their affairs; for the sailor and the chambermaid,
he inquired out mortgages and securities, and wrote bonds and contracts;
and had endeared himself to the old woman, who once rashly lent an
hundred pounds without consulting him, by informing her, that her
debtor, was on the point of bankruptcy, and posting so expeditiously
with an execution, that all the other creditors were defrauded.
To the squire he was a kind of steward, and had distinguished himself in
his office by his address in raising the rents, his inflexibility in
distressing the tardy tenants, and his acuteness in setting the parish
free from burdensome inhabitants, by shifting them off to some other
settlement.
Business made frequent attendance necessary; trust soon produced
intimacy; and success gave a claim to kindness; so that we had
opportunity to practise all the arts of flattery and endearment. My
mother, who could not support the thoughts of losing any thing,
determined, that all their fortunes should centre in me; and, in the
prosecution of her schemes, took care to inform me that _nothing cost
less than good words_, and that it is comfortable to leap into an estate
which another has got.
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