Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/236

228 severe, which is a safe and pardonable errour. She preserved her wit, judgment, and vivacity, to the last; but often used to complain of her memory.

Her fortune, with some accession, could not, as I have heard say, amount to much more than two thousand pounds, whereof a great part fell with her life, having been placed upon annuities in England, and one in Ireland.

In a person so extraordinary, perhaps, it may be pardonable to mention some particulars, although of little moment, farther than to set forth her character. Some presents of gold pieces being often made to her while she was a girl, by her mother and other friends, on promise to keep them; she grew into such a spirit of thrift, that, in about three years, they amounted to above two hundred pounds. She used to show them with boasting; but her mother, apprehending she would be cheated of them, prevailed, in some months, and with great importunities, to have them put out to interest; when, the girl, losing the pleasure of seeing and counting her gold, which she never failed of doing many times in a day, and despairing of heaping up such another treasure, her humour took quite the contrary turn: she grew careless and squandering of every new acquisition, and so continued till about two and twenty: when, by advice of some friends, and the fright of paying large bills of tradesmen who enticed her into their debt, she began to reflect upon her own folly, and was never at rest until she had discharged all her shop bills, and refunded herself a considerable sum she had run out. After which, by the addition of a few years and a superiour understanding, she became, and continued all her life, a most prudent economist; yet still with a stronger bent to the liberal