Being
therefore intimately acquainted with the particulars of his fortune,
he wrote a letter to Crabtree, subscribed with the name of his
principal farmer's wife, importing that her husband being lately
dead, and the greatest part of her cattle destroyed by the infectious
distemper, she found herself utterly incapable of paying the rent
which was due, or even of keeping the farm, unless he would, out
of his great goodness, be pleased to give her some assistance, and
allow her to sit free for a twelvemonth to come. This intimation
he found means to convey by post from a market town adjoining to
the farm, directed in the usual style to the cynic, who, seeing
it stamped with the known marks, could not possibly suspect any
imposition.
Hackneyed as he was in the ways of life, and steeled with his boasted
stoicism, this epistle threw him into such an agony of vexation,
that a double proportion of souring was visible in his aspect, when
he was visited by the author, who, having observed and followed
the postman at a proper distance, introduced a conversation upon
his own disappointments, in which, among other circumstances of his
own ill-luck, he told him, that his patron's steward had desired to
be excused from paying the last quarter of his interest precisely
at the appointed term, for which reason he should be utterly void
of cash, and therefore requested that Crabtree would accommodate
him with an hundred pieces of his next remittance from the country.
Pages:
1209
1210
1211
1212
1213
1214
1215
1216
1217
1218
1219
1220
1221
1222
1223
1224
1225
1226
1227
1228
1229
1230
1231
1232
1233