N° 73. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1750. Stulte, quid o frustrà votis puerilibus optas Why thinks the fool with childish hope to see What neither is, nor was, nor e'er shall be?-ELPHINSTON. "TO THE RAMBLER. 'SIR, IF you feel any of that compassion which you recommend to others, you will not disregard a case which I have reason from observation to believe very common, and which I know by experience to be very miserable. And though the querulous are seldom received with great ardour of kindness, I hope to escape the mortification of finding that my lamentations spread the contagion of impatience, and produce anger rather than tenderness. I write, not merely to vent the swelling of my heart, but to inquire by what means I may recover my tranquillity; and shall endeavour at brevity in my narrative, having long known that complaint quickly tires, however elegant or however just. 'I was born in a remote county, of a family that boasts alliances with the greatest names in English history, and extends its claims of affinity to the Tudors and Plantagenets. My ancestors, by little and little, wasted their patrimony, till my father had not enough left for the support of a family, without descending to the cultivation of his own grounds, being condemned to pay three sisters the fortunes allotted them by my grandfather, who is suspected to have made his will when he was incapable of adjusting properly the claims of his children, and who, perhaps without design, enriched his daughters by beg garing his son. My aunts being, at the death of their father, neither young nor beautiful, nor very eminent for softness of behaviour, were suffered to live unsolicited, and by accumulating the interest of their portions grew every day richer and prouder. My father pleased himself with foreseeing that the possessions of those ladies must revert at last to the hereditary estate, and, that his family might lose none of its dignity, resolved to keep me untainted with a lucrative employment; whenever therefore I discovered any inclination to the improvement of my condition, my mother never failed to put me in mind of my birth, and charged me to do nothing with which I might be reproached when I should come to my aunts' estate. In all the perplexities or vexations which want of money brought upon us, it was our constant practice to have recourse to futurity. If any of our neighbours surpassed us in appearance, we went home and contrived an equipage, with which the death of my aunts was to supply us. If any purseproud upstart was deficient in respect, vengeance was referred to the time in which our estate was to be repaired. We registered every act of civility and rudeness, inquired the number of dishes at every feast, and minuted the furniture of every house, that we might, when the hour of affluence should come, be able to eclipse all their splendour, and surpass all their magnificence. Upon plans of elegance and schemes of pleasurethe day rose and set, and the year went round unregarded, while we were busied in laying out plantations on ground not yet our own, and deliberating whether the manor house should be rebuilt or repaired. This was the amusement of our leisure and the solace of our exigencies; we met together only to contrive how our approaching fortune should be enjoyed; for in this our conversation always ended, on whatever subject it began. We had none of the collateral interests which diversify the life of others with joys and hopes, but had turned our whole attention on one event, which we could neither hasten nor retard, and had no other object of curiosity, than the health or sickness of my aunts, of which we were careful to procure very exact and early intelligence. 6 This visionary opulence for a while soothed our imagination, but afterward fired our wishes and exasperated our necessities, and my father could not always restrain himself from exclaiming, that no creature had so many lives as a cat and an old maid. At last, upon the recovery of his sister from an ague, which she was supposed to have caught by sparing fire, he began to lose his stomach, and four months afterward sunk into the grave. My mother, who loved her husband, survived him but a little while, and left me the sole heir of their lands, their schemes, and their wishes. As I had not enlarged my conceptions either by books or conversation, I differed only from my father by the freshness of my cheeks and the vigour of my step; and like him, gave way to no thoughts but of enjoying the wealth which my aunts were hoarding. At length the eldest sister fell ill. I paid the civilities and compliments which sickness requires with the utmost punctuality. I dreamed every night of escutcheons and white gloves, and inquired every morning at an early hour, whether there were any news of my dear aunt. At last a messenger was sent to inform me that I must come to her without the delay of a moment. I went and heard her last advice, but opening her will, found that she had left her fortune to her second sister. 'I hung my head; the younger sister threatened to be married, and every thing was disappointme discontent. I was in danger of losing irreparabl third of my hopes, and was condemned still t for the rest. Of part of my terror I was soon e for the youth, whom his relations would have pelled to marry the old lady, after innumerabl pulations, articles, and settlements, ran away the daughter of his father's groom; and my upon this conviction of the perfidy of man, res never to listen more to amorous addresses. Ten years longer I dragged the shackles of pectation, without ever suffering a day to pas which I did not compute how much my chance improved of being rich to-morrow. At last the cond lady died, after a short illness, which yet long enough to afford her time for the disposa her estate, which she gave to me after the deat her sister. 'I was now relieved from part of my misery larger fortune, though not in my power, was cert and unalienable; nor was there now any dang that I might at last be frustrated of my hopes b fret of dotage, the flatteries of a chambermaid, whispers of a tale-bearer, or the officiousness of nurse. But my wealth was yet in reversion, aunt was to be buried before I could emerge to gra deur and pleasure; and there were yet, accordi to my father's observation, nine lives between me a happiness. "I however lived on, without any clamours of di content, and comforted myself with considering th all are mortal, and they who are continually decay ing must at last be destroyed. But let no man from this time suffer his felicit to depend on the death of his aunt. The good gen tlewoman was very regular in her hours and simpl in her diet, and in walking or sitting still, waking of sleeping, had always in view the preservation of her health. She was subject to no disorder but hypochondriac dejection; by which, without intention, she increased my miseries, for whenever the weather was cloudy, she would take her bed and send me notice that her time was come. I went with all the haste of eagerness, and sometimes received passionate injunctions to be kind to her maid, and directions how the last offices should be performed; but if before my arrival the sun happened to break out, or the wind to change, I met her at the door, or found her in the garden, bustling and vigilant, with all the tokens of long life. Sometimes, however, she fell into distempers, and was thrice given over by the doctor, yet she found means of slipping through the gripe of death, and after having tortured me three months at each time with violent alternations of hope and fear, came out of her chamber without any other hurt than the loss of flesh, which in a few weeks she recovered by broths and jellies. 'As most have sagacity sufficient to guess at the desire of an heir, it was the constant practice of those who were hoping at second-hand, and endeavoured to secure my favour against the time when I should be rich, to pay their court, by informing me that my aunt began to droop, that she had lately a bad night, that she coughed feebly, and that she could never climb May-hill; or at least, that the autumn would carry her off. Thus was I flattered in the winter with the piercing winds of March, and in the summer with the fogs of September. But she lived through spring and fall, and set heat and cold at defiance, till after near half a century, I buried her on the fourteenth of last June, aged ninety-three years, five months and six days. For two months after her death I was rich, and |