Though my father was hugely tickled with the subtleties of these learned discourses⸻’twas still but like the anointing of a broken bone⸻The moment he got home, the weight of his afflictions returned upon him but so much the heavier, as is ever the case when the staff we lean on slips from under us.—He became pensive—walked frequently forth to the fishpond—let down one loop of his hat⸺sigh’d often⸺forbore to snap—and, as the hasty sparks of temper, which occasion snapping, so much assist perspiration and digestion, as Hippocrates tells us—he had certainly fallen ill with the extinction of them, had not his thoughts been critically drawn off, and his health rescued by a fresh train of disquietudes left him, with a legacy of a thousand pounds, by my aunt Dinah .
My father had scarce read the letter, when taking the thing by the right end, he instantly began to plague and puzzle his head how to lay it out mostly to the honour of his family.—A hundred-and-fifty odd projects took possession of his brains by turns—he would do this, and that, and t’other—He would go to Rome ⸺he would go to law⸺he would buy stock⸺he would buy John Hobson’s farm—he would new forefront his house, and add a new wing to make it even⸺There was a fine water-mill on this side, and he would build a windmill on the other side of the river in full view to answer it—But above all things in the world, he would enclose the great Ox-moor , and send out my brother Bobby immediately upon his travels.
But as the sum was finite , and consequently could not do everything⸺and in truth very few of these to any purpose—of all the projects which offered themselves upon this occasion, the two last seemed to make the deepest impression; and he would infallibly have determined upon both at once, but for the small inconvenience hinted at