ok too, it will be your comfort on the way: these two
lines in it are worth a million, I have been young, and now am old; yet
never saw I the righteous man forsaken, or his seed begging their bread.
Let this be your consolation as you travel on. Go, my boy, whatever be
thy fortune let me see thee once a year; still keep a good heart, and
farewell.' As he was possest of integrity and honour, I was under no
apprehensions from throwing him naked into the amphitheatre of life; for
I knew he would act a good part whether vanquished or victorious. His
departure only prepared the way for our own, which arrived a few days
afterwards. The leaving a neighbourhood in which we had enjoyed so many
hours of tranquility, was not without a tear, which scarce fortitude
itself could suppress. Besides, a journey of seventy miles to a family
that had hitherto never been above ten from home, filled us with
apprehension, and the cries of the poor, who followed us for some miles,
contributed to encrease it. The first day's journey brought us in safety
within thirty miles of our future retreat, and we put up for the night
at an obscure inn in a village by the way. When we were shewn a room, I
desired the landlord, in my usual way, to let us have his company,
with which he complied, as what he drank would encrease the bill next
morning. He knew, however, the whole neighbourhood to which I was
removing, particularly 'Squire Thornhill, who was to be my landlord, and
who lived within a few miles of the place. This gentleman he described
as one who desired to know little more of the world than its pleasures,
being particularly remarkable for his attachment to the fair sex. He
observed that no virtue was able to resist his arts and assiduity, and
that scarce a farmer's daughter within ten miles round but what had
found him successful and faithless. Though this account gave me some
pain, it had a very different effect upon my daughters, whose features
seemed to brighten with the expectation of an approaching triumph, nor
was my wife less pleased and confident of their allurements and virtue.
While our thoughts were thus employed, the hostess entered the room to
inform her husband, that the strange gentleman, who had been two days in
the house, wanted money, and could not satisfy them for his reckoning.
'Want money!' replied the host, 'that must be impossible; for it was no
later than yesterday he paid three guineas to our beadle to spare an
old broken