As I may not, said she, see you three gentlemen together again, let me
take this opportunity to acknowledge my obligations to you all. I am
inexpressibly obliged to you, Sir, and to you, Sir, [courtesying to the
doctor and to Mr. Goddard] for your more than friendly, your paternal
care and concern for me. Humanity in your profession, I dare say, is far
from being a rare qualification, because you are gentlemen by your
profession: but so much kindness, so much humanity, did never desolate
creature meet with, as I have met with from you both. But indeed I have
always observed, that where a person relies upon Providence, it never
fails to raise up a new friend for every old one that falls off.

This gentleman, [bowing to me,] who, some people think, should have been
one of the last I should have thought of for my executor--is,
nevertheless, (such is the strange turn that things have taken!) the only
one I can choose; and therefore I have chosen him for that charitable
office, and he has been so good as to accept of it: for, rich as I may
boast myself to be, I am rather so in right than in fact, at this
present. I repeat, therefore, my humble thanks to you all three, and beg
of God to return to you and yours [looking to each] an hundred-fold, the
kindness and favour you have shown me; and that it may be in the power of
you and of yours, to the end of time, to confer benefits, rather than to
be obliged to receive them. This is a godlike power, gentlemen: I once
rejoiced in it some little degree; and much more in the prospect I had of
its being enlarged to me; though I have had the mortification to
experience the reverse, and to be obliged almost to every body I have
seen or met with: but all, originally, through my own fault; so I ought
to bear the punishment without repining: and I hope I do. Forgive these
impertinencies: a grateful heart, that wants the power it wishes for, to
express itself suitably to its own impulses, will be at a loss what
properly to dictate to the tongue; and yet, unable to restrain its