I know not if the courteous reader will accord in opinion with me, that the proposal to elect me into the legislature was the greatest event in my life, but such I have always considered it, because the refusal was the result of a great mental controversy, and from that time I steadily began to knit up all my manifold concerns into the smallest possible compass. In doing this, I neither proposed idleset for myself, nor the remission of my wonted activity; on the contrary, my main object was to be free to give my mind and experience to the furtherance of my sons’ fortunes, chiefly of Robert’s; not for partiality, though he was the first-born, and the son of my first love, but because my family by my second wife were amply provided for by Mr. Hoskins, and because I did not intend, having assigned my interest in the salt-works to Robin on his marriage with Volumnia Cockspur, that he should partake in the division I proposed to make of my other property; moreover, though it may be regarded as a thing with which I could not properly be said to have any thing to do, he received with his wife a handsome fortune, well on to six thousand pounds sterling, which, however, her brothers with great prudence made a point of having settled on herself.

Charles was fixed in the store; and when I publicly announced my secession from business, Mr. Hoskins, in accepting him for a partner in my place, gave him a share in the bank, which was doing wonders—coining money! My brother, on succeeding Mr. Herbert as the manager of the bank, also succeeded to his share, and was grateful for the part I took in leading him on to such good fortune. My daughter Susannah was married to Mr. Bradshaw Cockspur in the spring following the election affair; an event that gave all friends on both sides great pleasure, for he is a young man of a blithe and jocund humour, none the worse of a snaffle, however, and she is a staid, judicious creature, who manages him as if he were a very lamb. Every body who knows them says it is a pleasure to see their happiness.