d together to make
these houses the burthen of my life. I had no sooner, indeed, begun to
look into these matters for myself, than I discovered so many injustices
and met with so much studied incivility, that I was plunged into a long
series of lawsuits, some of which are pending to this day. You must have
heard my name already; I am the Mrs. Luxmore of the Law Reports: a
strange destiny, indeed, for one born with an almost cowardly desire for
peace! But I am of the stamp of those who, when they have once begun a
task, will rather die than leave their duty unfulfilled. I have met with
every obstacle: insolence and ingratitude from my own lawyers; in my
adversaries, that fault of obstinacy which is to me perhaps the most
distasteful in the calendar; from the bench, civility indeed--always, I
must allow, civility--but never a spark of independence, never that
knowledge of the law and love of justice which we have a right to look
for in a judge, the most august of human officers. And still, against
all these odds, I have undissuadably persevered.

It was after the loss of one of my innumerable cases (a subject on which
I will not dwell) that it occurred to me to make a melancholy pilgrimage
to my various houses. Four were at that time tenantless and closed, like
pillars of salt, commemorating the corruption of the age and the decline
of private virtue. Three were occupied by persons who had wearied me by
every conceivable unjust demand and legal subterfuge--persons whom, at
that very hour, I was moving heaven and earth to turn into the streets.
This was perhaps the sadder spectacle of the two; and my heart grew hot
within me to behold them occupying, in my very teeth, and with an
insolent ostentation, these handsome structures which were as much mine
as the flesh upon my body.

One more house remained for me to visit, that in which we now are. I had
let it (for at that period I lodged in a hotel, the life that I have
always preferred) to a Colonel Geraldine, a gentleman attached to Prince
Florizel of Bohemia, whom you must certainly have heard of; and I had
supposed, from the character and position of my tenant, that here, at
least, I was safe against annoyance. What was my surprise to find this
house also shuttered and apparently deserted! I will not deny that I was
offended; I conceived that a house, like a yacht, was better to be kept
in commission; and I promised myself to bring the matter before my
solicitor the foll