Accordingly we removed
to the distance of fifteen miles from town, into a better house, because
there was a large garden adjoining it, and a field for the horse. It
afforded abundance of fruit, and fruit was good for scorbutic and
plethoric habits, our table would be furnished at less expense, and
fifteen miles was but an hour's ride more than seven miles.
All this was plausible, and I soon found myself under the necessity of
keeping a gardener; so that every cabbage that I before put on my table
for one _penny_ cost me one _shilling_, and I bought my dessert at the
dearest hand; but I was in it--I found myself happy--in a profusion of
fruit, and a blight was little less than death to me.
This new acquired want, now introduced all the expensive modes of having
fruit in spite of either blasts or blights. I built myself a small hot
house, and it was only the addition of a chaldron or two of coals; the
gardener was the same, and we had the pride of putting on our table a
pine-apple occasionally, when our acquaintance were contented with the
exhibition of a melon.
From this expense we soon got into a fresh one. As we often out-staid
Monday in the country, it was thought prudent that I should go to town on
Monday by myself, and return in the evening; this being too much for one
horse, a second-hand chariot might be purchased for a little more than
what the one-horse chaise would sell for; the field was large enough for
two horses; going to town in summer in an open carriage was choking
ourselves with dust, burning our faces, and the number of carriages on the
road made driving dangerous; besides, having now a genteel acquaintance in
the neighbourhood, there was no paying a visit in a one-horse chaise.
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