elegant house, situated in a fine country, and a good
neighbourhood. The year was spent in moral or rural amusements;
in visiting our rich neighbours, and relieving such as were poor.
We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo; all our
adventures were by the fire-side, and all our migrations from the
blue bed to the brown.

As we lived near the road, we often had the traveller or stranger
visit us to taste our gooseberry wine, for which we had great
reputation; and I profess with the veracity of an historian, that
I never knew one of them find fault with it. Our cousins too,
even to the fortieth remove, all remembered their affinity,
without any help from the Herald's office, and came very
frequently to see us. Some of them did us no great honour by
these claims of kindred; as we had the blind, the maimed, and the
halt amongst the number. However, my wife always insisted that as
they were the same flesh and blood, they should sit with us at
the same table. So that if we had not, very rich, we generally
had very happy friends about us; for this remark will hold good
thro' life, that the poorer the guest, the better pleased he ever
is with being treated: and as some men gaze with admiration at
the colours of a tulip, or the wing of a butterfly, so I was by
nature an admirer of happy human faces. However, when any one of
our relations was found to be a person of very bad character, a
troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his
leaving my house, I ever took care to lend him a riding coat, or
a pair of boots, or sometimes an horse of small value, and I
always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to
return them. By this the house was cleared of such as we did not
like; but never was the family of Wakefield known to turn the