Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/315

Rh thing put on as necessary before a lover; but I have since observed in abundance of your letters such marks of a severe indifference, that I began to think it was hardly possible for one of my few good qualities to please you. I never knew any so hard to be worked upon, even in matters where the interest and concern are entirely your own; all which, I say, passed easily while we were in the state of formalities and ceremony; but, since that, there is no other way of accounting for this untractable behaviour in you, but by imputing it to a want of common esteem and friendship for me.

"When I desired an account of your fortune, I had no such design as you pretend to imagine. I have told you many a time, that in England it was in the power of any young fellow of common sense, to get a larger fortune than ever you pretended to. I asked, in order to consider whether it were sufficient, with the help of my poor income, to make one of your humour easy in a married state. I think it comes to almost a hundred pounds a year; and I think at the same time that no young woman in the world, of the same income, would dwindle away their health and life in such a sink, and among such family conversation; neither have all your letters been once able to persuade that you have the least value for me, because you so little regarded what I so often said upon that matter. The dismal account you say I have given of my livings, I can assure you to be a true one; and, since it is a dismal one even in your own opinion, you can best draw consequences from it. The place where Dr. Bolton lived is upon a living which he keeps with the deanery; but the place of residence for that they have given him, is " within