My father, his youngest son, falling in love with a poor relation, who lived with the old gentleman in the quality of housekeeper, espoused her privately; and I was the first fruit of that marriage.  On my grandfather telling my father one day, that he had provided a match for him, the latter frankly owned what he had done.  He added, that no exception could be taken to his wife’s virtue, birth, beauty, and good sense; and as for fortune, it was beneath his care; he could be in no danger of wanting while his father’s tenderness remained, which he and his wife should always cultivate with the utmost veneration.  “Your brothers and sisters,” said my grandfather, “did not think it beneath them to consult me in an affair of such importance as matrimony; neither, I suppose, would you have omitted that piece of duty, had not you some secret fund in reserve, to the comforts of which I leave you, with a desire that you will this night seek out another habitation for yourself and wife.  Sir, you are a polite gentleman, I will send you an account of the expense I have been at in your education—­I wish you a great deal of joy, and am your very humble servant.”

So saying, he left my father in a situation easily imagined.  However, he did not long hesitate:  for being perfectly well acquainted with my grandfather’s disposition, he knew it would be to no purpose to attempt him by prayers and entreaties.  So without any further application, he betook himself with his disconsolate bedfellow to a farmhouse, where an old servant of his mother dwelt.  In this ill-adapted situation they remained for some time, until my mother, hoping that her tears and condition would move my grandfather to compassion, went, in disguise, to the house, and implored his forgiveness.  My grandfather told her that he had already made a vow which put it out of his power to assist her; and this said, he retired.

My mother was so afflicted by this that she was, at once, thrown into violent pains.  By the friendship of an old maidservant she was carried up to a garret, where I was born.  Three days later my grandfather sent a peremptory order to her to be gone, and weakness, grief, and anxiety soon put an end to her life.  My father was so affected with her death, that he remained six weeks deprived of his senses; during which time, the people where he lodged carried the infant to the old man, who relented so far as to send the child to nurse.

My father’s delirium was succeeded by a profound melancholy.  At length he disappeared, and could not be heard of; and there were not wanting some who suspected my uncles of being concerned in my father’s fate, on the supposition that they would all share in the patrimony destined for him.

I grew apace; and the jealous enmity of my cousins quickly showed itself; before I was six years of age their implacable hatred made them blockade my grandfather, so that I never saw him but by stealth.

I was soon after sent to school at a village hard by, of which my grandfather had been dictator time out of mind; but as he neither paid for my board, nor supplied me with clothes, books, or other necessaries, my condition was very ragged and contemptible; and the schoolmaster gave himself no concern about the progress I made.