was a good scholar from his birth, and a very 'cute lad: I thought to
make him a priest,[R] but he did better for himself: seeing how he was
as good a clerk as any in the county, the agent gave him his rent
accounts to copy, which he did first of all for the pleasure of obliging
the gentleman, and would take nothing at all for his trouble, but was
always proud to serve the family. By-and-by a good farm bounding us to
the east fell into his honour's hands, and my son put in a proposal for
it: why shouldn't he, as well as another? The proposals all went over to
the master at the Bath, who knowing no more of the land than the child
unborn, only having once been out a grousing on it before he went to
England; and the value of lands, as the agent informed him, falling
every year in Ireland, his honour wrote over in all haste a bit of a
letter, saying he left it all to the agent, and that he must let it as
well as he could to the best bidder, to be sure, and send him over
200_l_., by return of post: with this the agent gave me a hint, and I
spoke a good word for my son, and gave out in the country that nobody
need bid against us. So his proposal was just the thing, and he a good
tenant; and he got a promise of an abatement in the rent, after the
first year, for advancing the half year's rent at signing the lease,
which was wanting to complete the agent's 200_l_., by the return of the
post, with all which my master wrote back he was well satisfied. About
this time we learned from the agent as a great secret, how the money
went so fast, and the reason of the thick coming of the master's drafts:
he was a little too fond of play; and Bath, they say, was no place for a
young man of his fortune, where there were so many of his own countrymen
too hunting him up and down, day and night, who had nothing to lose. At
last, at Christmas, the agent wrote over to stop the drafts, for he
could raise no more money on bond or mortgage, or from the tenants, or
any how, nor had he any more to lend himself, and desired at the same
time to decline the agency for the future, wishing Sir Kit his health