I BELONG to an order of mankind, considerable
at least for their number, to which your notice
has never been formally extended, though equally
entitled to regard with those triflers, who have
hitherto supplied you with topicks of amusement
or instruction. I am, Mr. Rambler, a legacy-hunter;
and, as every man is willing to think well of the
tribe in which his name is registered, you will
forgive my vanity, if I remind you that the legacy-
hunter, however degraded by an ill-compounded
appellation in our barbarous language, was known, as
I am told, in ancient Rome, by the sonorous titles
of Captator and Haeredipeta.
My father was an attorney in the country, who
married his master's daughter in hopes of a fortune
which he did not obtain, having been, as he afterwards
discovered, chosen by her only because she
had no better offer, and was afraid of service. I was
the first offspring of a marriage, thus reciprocally
fraudulent, and therefore could not be expected to
inherit much dignity or generosity, and if I had
them not from nature, was not likely ever to attain
them; for, in the years which I spent at home, I
never heard any reason for action or forbearance, but
that we should gain money or lose it; nor was
taught any other style of commendation, than that
Mr. Sneaker is a warm man, Mr. Gripe has done
his business, and needs care for nobody.
My parents, though otherwise not great philosophers,
knew the force of early education, and took
care that the blank of my understanding should be
filled with impressions of the value of money. My
mother used, upon all occasions, to inculcate some
salutary axioms, such as might incite me to KEEP
WHAT I HAD, AND GET WHAT I COULD; she informed me
that we were in a world, where ALL MUST CATCH THAT
CATCH CAN; and as I grew up, stored my memory
with deeper observations; restrained me from the
usual puerile expenses, by remarking that MANY A
LITTLE MADE A MICKLE; and, when I envied the finery
of my neighbours, told me that BRAG WAS A GOOD
DOG, BUT HOLDFAST WAS A BETTER.
I was soon sagacious enough to discover that I
was not born to great wealth; and having heard no
other name for happiness, was sometimes inclined
to repine at my condition. But my mother always
relieved me, by saying, that there was money enough
in the family, that IT WAS GOOD TO BE OF KIN TO MEANS,
that I had nothing to do but to please my friends,
and I might come to hold up my head with the
best squire in the country.
These splendid expectations arose from our
alliance to three persons of considerable fortune. My
mother's aunt had attended on a lady, who, when
she died, rewarded her officiousness and fidelity
with a large legacy. My father had two relations,
of whom one had broken his indentures and run to
sea, from whence, after an absence of thirty years,
he returned with ten thousand pounds; and the
other had lured an heiress out of a window, who,
dying of her first child, had left him her estate, on
which he lived, without any other care than to
collect his rents, and preserve from poachers that
game which he could not kill himself.
These hoarders of money were visited and courted
by all who had any pretence to approach them, and
received presents and compliments from cousins
who could scarcely tell the degree of their relation.
But we had peculiar advantages, which encouraged
us to hope, that we should by degrees supplant our
competitors. My father, by his profession, made
himself necessary in their affairs, for the sailor and
the chambermaid, he inquired out mortgages and
securities, and wrote bonds and contracts; and had
endeared himself to the old woman, who once rashly
lent an hundred pounds without consulting him, by
informing her, that her debtor, was on the point
of bankruptcy, and posting so expeditiously with
an execution, that all the other creditors were
defrauded.
To the squire he was a kind of steward, and had
distinguished himself in his office by his address in
raising the rents, his inflexibility in distressing the
tardy tenants, and his acuteness in setting the parish
free from burdensome inhabitants, by shifting
them of to some other settlement.
Business made frequent attendance necessary;
trust soon produced intimacy; and success gave a
claim to kindness; so that we had opportunity to
practise all the arts of flattery and endearment.
My mother, who could not support the thoughts
of losing any thing, determined, that all their
fortunes should centre in me; and, in the prosecution
of her schemes, took care to inform me that NOTHING
COST LESS THAN GOOD WORDS, and that it is comfortable
to leap into an estate which another has got.
She trained me by these precepts to the utmost
ductility of obedience, and the closest attention to
profit. At an age when other boys are sporting in
the fields or murmuring in the school, I was
contriving some new method of paying my court;
inquiring the age of my future benefactors; or
considering how I should employ their legacies.
If our eagerness of money could have been
satisfied with the possessions of any one of my relations,
they might perhaps have been obtained; but as it
was impossible to be always present with all three,
our competitors were busy to efface any trace of
affection which we might have left behind; and
since there was not, on any part, such superiority
of merit as could enforce a constant and unshaken
preference, whoever was the last that flattered or
obliged, had, for a time, the ascendant.
My relations maintained a regular exchange of
courtesy, took care to miss no occasion of condolence
or congratulation, and sent presents at stated
times, but had in their hearts not much esteem for
one another. The seaman looked with contempt
upon the squire as a milksop and a landman, who
had lived without knowing the points of the compass,
or seeing any part of the world beyond the
county-town; and whenever they met, would talk
of longitude and latitude, and circles and tropicks,
would scarcely tell him the hour without some
mention of the horizon and meridian, nor shew him
the news without detecting his ignorance of the
situation of other countries.
The squire considered the sailor as a rude
uncultivated savage, with little more of human than his
form, and diverted himself with his ignorance of all
common objects and affairs; when he could persuade
him to go into the field, he always exposed him to
the sportsmen, by sending him to look for game in
improper places; and once prevailed upon him to
be present at the races, only that he might shew
the gentlemen how a sailor sat upon a horse.
The old gentlewoman thought herself wiser than
both, for she lived with no servant but a maid, and
saved her money. The others were indeed sufficiently
frugal; but the squire could not live without dogs
and horses, and the sailor never suffered the day to
pass but over a bowl of punch, to which, as he was
not critical in the choice of his company, every man
was welcome that could roar out a catch, or tell a
story.
All these, however, I was to please; an arduous
task; but what will not youth and avarice undertake?
I had an unresisting suppleness of temper,
and an insatiable wish for riches; I was perpetually
instigated by the ambition of my parents, and assisted
occasionally by their instructions. What these
advantages enabled me to perform, shall be told in
the next letter of,
Yours, &c.