ABSTRACT
My father’s house was in the country, seven miles away from the nearest town. He had been an officer in the navy; but, as he had met with some accident that would disable him from ever serving again, he gave up his commission, and his half-pay. 1 He had a small private fortune, and my mother had not been penniless; so he purchased a house, and ten or twelve acres of land, and set himself up as an amateur farmer on a very small scale. My mother rejoiced over the very small scale of his operations; and when my father regretted, as he did very often, that no more land was to be purchased in the neighbourhood, I could see her setting herself a sum in her head, ‘If on twelve acres he manages to lose a hundred pounds a year, what would be our loss on a hundred and fifty?’ But when my father was pushed hard on the subject of the money he spent in his sailor-like farming, he had one constant retreat:
