 the papers being immediately drawn and executed, the money
was deposited in the hands of the mortgager, who, in the hearing of the lender,
laid strong injunctions on his steward to pay the interest punctually at
quarter-day.
    The best part of our hero's fortune being thus happily deposited, and the
agent gratified with a present of fifty pieces, he began to put his retrenching
scheme in execution; all his servants (Pipes excepted) were discharged, his
chariot and running-horses disposed of, his house-keeping broke up, and his
furniture sold by auction: nay, the heat of his disposition was as remarkable in
this, as in any other transaction of his life; for every step of his saving
project was taken with such eagerness, and even precipitation, that most of his
companions thought he was either ruined or mad. But he answered all their
expostulations with a string of prudent apophthegms, such as, »The shortest
follies are the best;« »Better to retrench upon conviction than compulsion;« and
divers other wise maxims, seemingly the result of experience and philosophic
reflection. To such a degree of enthusiasm did his present oeconomy prevail,
that he was actually seized with the desire of amassing; and as he every day
received proposals, from those brokers whom he had employed, about the disposal
of his cash, he at length ventured fifteen hundred pounds upon bottomry, being
tempted by the excessive premium.
    But it must be observed, for the honour of our adventurer, that this
reformation did not at all interfere with the good qualities of his heart: he
was still as friendly and benevolent as ever, tho' his liberality was more
subjected to the restraint of reason; and he might have justly pleaded, in
vindication of his generosity, that he retrenched the superfluities in his own
way of living, in order to preserve the power of assisting his fellow-creatures
in distress. Numberless were the objects to which he extended his charity in
private. Indeed, he exerted this virtue in secret, not only on account of
avoiding the charge of ostentation, but also because he was ashamed of being
detected in such an awkward unfashionable practice, by the censorious observers
of this humane generation. In this particular, he seemed to confound the ideas
of virtue and vice; for he did good as other people do evil, that is, by
stealth; and was so capricious in point of behaviour, that frequently, in
public, he wagged his tongue in satirical animadversions upon that poverty,
which his hand had, in private relieved. Yet, far from shunning the
acquaintance
