reached that intensity of feeling, my excellent and indefatigable
ancestor appeared to have no suspicion. He pursued his ordinary
occupations with his ordinary single-minded devotion, and the last
thing that would have crossed his brain was the suspicion that he
had not punctiliously done his duty by his ward. Had he acted
otherwise, none surely would have suffered more by his delinquency
than her husband, and none would have a better right to complain.
Now, as her husband never dreamt of making such an accusation, it is
not at all surprising that my ancestor remained in ignorance of his
wife's feelings at the hour of his death.

It has been said that the opinions of the successor of the fancy-
dealer underwent some essential changes between the ages of ten and
forty. After he had reached his twenty-second year, or, in other
words, the moment he began to earn money for himself, as well as for
his master, he ceased to cry "Wilkes and liberty!" He was not heard
to breathe a syllable concerning the obligations of society toward
the weak and unfortunate, for the five years that succeeded his
majority; he touched lightly on Christian duties in general, after
he got to be worth fifty pounds of his own; and as for railing at
human follies, it would have been rank ingratitude in one who so
very unequivocally got his bread by them. About this time, his
remarks on the subject of taxation, however, were singularly
caustic, and well applied. He railed at the public debt, as a public
curse, and ominously predicted the dissolution of society, in
consequence of the burdens and incumbrances it was hourly
accumulating on the already overloaded shoulders of the trader.

The period of his marriage and his succession to the hoardings of
his former master, may be dated as the second epocha in the opinions