88 A ROLLING STONE GATHERS NO MOSS,

poor neighbour—I mean in the advancement of my plantation;
for the first thing I did I bought me a negro slave, and a Kuropean
servant also—I mean another besides that which the captain
brought me from Lisbon.

But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of
our greatest adversity, so was it with me. I went on the next
year with great success in my plantation. I raised fifty great rolls
of tobacco on my own ground, more than I had disposed of for
necessaries among my neighbours; and these fifty rolls being each
of above a hundredweight, were well cured and laid by against the
return of the fleet from Lisbon. And now, increasing in business.
and in wealth, my head began to be full of projects and under-
takings beyond my reach—such as are indeed often the ruin of
the best heads in business.

Had I continued in the station I was now in, I had room for all
the happy things to have yet befallen me for which my father so
earnestly recommended. a quiet, retired life, and of which he had
so sensibly described the middle station of life to be full of. But
other things attended me, and I was still to be the wilful agent of
all may own miseries, and particularly to increase my fault and
double the reflections upon myself, which in my fature sorrows I
should have leisure to make. All these miscarriages were pro-
cured by my apparent obstinate adherence to my foolish inclination
of wandering abroad, and pursuing that inclination in contradiction
to the clearest views of doing myself good in a fair and plain. pur-
suit of those prospects and those measures’ of life which Nature
and Providence concurred to present me with and to make my
duty. :

As I had once done thus in my breaking away from my parents,
s0 I could not be content now, but I must go and leave the happy
view I had of being a rich and thriving man in my new plantation,
only to pursue a rash and immoderate desire of rising faster than
the nature of the thing admitted; and thus I cast myself down
again into the deepest gulf of human misery that ever man fell
into, or perhaps could be consistent with. life and @ state of health
in the world. ,

To come, then,.by the just degrees to the particulars of this