Page:Remarkable history of the miser of Berkshire.pdf/22

( 22 ) was to the honour of his character. — If accident placed him in debt to any person; even in the most trivial monner, he was never easy till it was paid: And it should be noted, that never was he known, on any occasion, to fail in what he said. — Of the punctuality of his word, he was so scrupulousy tenacious, that no person ever requested better security; and he was so particular in every thing of promise, that in any appointment or meeting, or the hour of it, he exceeded military exactness.

Mr. Elwes passed the summer of 1788 at his house in Welbeck Street, London, without any other society than that of two maid servants; for he had now given up the expence of keeping any male domestic — His chief employment used to be that of getting up early in the morning to visit his houses is Marybone, which during the summer were repairing — As he was there generally by four o'clock in the morning, he was of course on the spot before the workmen; and he used contentedly to sit down on the steps before the door, to scold them when they did come — The neighbours, who used to see him appear thus regularly every morning, and who concluded, from his apparel, he was one of the workmen, observed, there never was so punctual a man as the old carpenter —During the whole morning he would continue to run up and down stairs, to see the men were not idle for an inſtant, with the same anxiety as if his whole happiness in life had been centered in the finishing this house regardless of the greater property he had at stake in various places, and for