“Verilie it is not want but rather plentie that causeth avarice.  I will speake of mine owne experience concerning this subject.  I have lived in three kinds of condition since I came out of my infancie.  The first time, which continued well nigh twentie yeares, I have past it over as one who had no other means but casual without any certaine maintenance or regular prescription.  My expenses were so much the more carelessly laid out and lavishly employed, by how much more they wholly depended on fortunes rashnesse and exhibition.  I never lived so well at ease....  My second manner of life hath been to have monie:  which when I had once fingred, according to my condition I sought to hoorde up some against a rainy day....  My minde was ever on my halfe-penny; my thoughts ever that way.  Of commoditie I had little or nothing....  And after you are once accustomed, and have fixed your thoughts upon a heape of monie, it is no longer at your service; you dare not diminish it; it is a building which if you touch or take any part from it, you will think it will all fall.  And I should sooner pawne my clothes or sell a horse, with lesse care and compulsion than make a breach into that beloved purse which I kept in store....  I was some yeares of the same humour:  I wot not what good Demon did most profitably remove me from it, like to the Siracusan, and made me to neglect my sparing....  I live from hand to mouth, from day to day, and have I but to supplie my present and ordinarie needs I am satisfied....  And I singularly gratifie myself this correction came upon me in an age naturally inclined to covetousnesse, and that I am free from that folly so common and peculiar to old men, and the most ridiculous of all humane follies.  Feraulez who had passed through both fortunes and found that encrease of goods was no encrease of appetite to eat, to sleepe or to embrace his wife; and who on the other side felt heavily on his shoulders the importunitie of ordering and directing his Oeconomicall affairs as it doth on mine, determined with himselfe to content a poore young man, his faithfull friend, greedily gaping after riches, and frankly made him a present donation of all his great and excessive riches, always provided hee should undertake to entertaine and find him, honestly and in good sort, as his guest and friend.  In which estate they lived afterwards most happily and mutually content with the change of their condition.”

And so I hope it may come to pass with the remaining years of Simon and of Damer.

McDONOUGH’S WIFE