JOHN ELWES NEARLY STARVED TO DEATH. 139

go into an uninhabited house in Great Marlborough Street, and he ascertained from a pot-boy that an old woman generally opened the stable-door to admit Mr. Elwes. He repaired thither, and knocked loudly at the door, but could gain no admittance; he determined to have the stable-door opened; a blacksmith was sent for, and they entered the house together; ascending the stairs, they heard the moans of some one seemingly indisposed, and went into the chamber, and there, upon a squalid mattress lay the apparently lifeless body of old Elwes. There was nothing near him but a part of a stale roll and a jug of cold water. An apothecary was called in, and after a time the miser recovered enough to say, that he believed he had been ill for two or three days, and that there was an old woman in the house, but for some reason or other she had not been near him; that she had been ill herself, but had got well, and he supposed she had gone away. On entering the garret the old woman was found lifeless on a mat upon the floor, and to all appearances had been dead about two days: yet at the time of this occurrence Mr. Elwes was one of the richest men of his day, and possessed so many houses in London, that he became from calculation his own insurer.

As his end approached he had many warnings of coming dissolution; his nights were broken and restless, and he frequently arose to satisfy himself that

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his money was safe, and he was sometimes heard as if struggling with some one in his chamber, and crying out, "I will keep my money; no one shall rob me of my property." On any one going into his room he started alarmed, and as if waking from a troubled dream, would appear surprised, and quietly retire again to his bed seeming totally unconscious of what had happened. In the autumn of 1789 his mind began to waver; his memory became impaired, and his reason rapidly declined. A propensity which had long been over active and diseased, now became fearfully violent by the excitement of insanity. For many weeks before his death he used to go to bed in his clothes as perfectly dressed as in the day-time. One morning he was found in his bed fast asleep with his shoes on, a stick in his hand, and an old hat on his head. The anxieties and feverish excitement which his passion for gold produced, tended to shorten his life. When Dr. Wells, his last physician, was called in, and found him extended on his miserable pallet, denying himself every comfort, and with his mind totally absorbed with his gold, he turned to one of the sons of Mr. Elwes, and said, "Sir, your father might have lived these twenty years, but his temper has made it impossible to hope for anything; the body is yet strong, but the mind is gone entirely." He died quietly on the 18th of November, 1789, but without any indication of repentance, without any signs

of a diminution of his avarice, or without any thoughts of the future. In his last words addressed to his son he expressed a hope "that he had left him what he wished." He bequeathed the whole of his vast fortune, amounting in addition to his estate, to the sum of five hundred thousand pounds, to his two natural sons, George and John Elwes.

Thus died John Elwes, the representative of a family of misers. He began, as we have seen, his career as a gambler, in which he displayed his innate avarice, modified by his contact with the vices of fashionable life; for amidst the most boundless profligacy at the gaming-table, we have seen that acquisitiveness was ever active, and his mind was always on the watch to

save.

Search the Ruling Passion. There alone,

The wild are constant, and the cunning known;
The fool consistent and the false sincere;
Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.

POPE.

CHAPTER X.

NOTICES OF FEMALE MISERS.

Mary Luhorne, the Female Miser of Deptford; her Miserable Habits of Penury; her Love of Hoarding; her enormous Wealth-Elizabeth Wilcocks and her Secret Hoards-The Misses Vooght, Three Female Misers of Amsterdam; a singular instance of Avarice as a Family failing-Joanna Horrel the Applewoman of Exeter; her sumptuous fortune, &c.

Ir has been remarked, that when women become vicious they know no medium; they are good or they are very bad; and when once fascinated with vice, they are more difficult to reclaim than men. Certainly, in the cases which we subjoin of female misers, the passion of avarice appears in fearful strength, rendering the heart of its votaries callous to the call of duty, and insensible to the dictates of conscience.

In the month of August of the year 1766 there died at Deptford a wretched old woman, in her ninety-sixth year; she was the widow of Captain Luhorne, of the East India service. She survived her husband forty years, and during the whole of that period she lived in a most miserly and penurious manner. She not only

denied herself the comforts, but even the most common necessaries and decencies of life. Her clothes were so tattered that she was almost in a state of nudity, and the rags which she hung upon her shoulders were so filthy, and so animated with vermin, that passengers took the precaution to keep at a distance from her in the streets. She was never known to have lit a fire in her room, and never indulged in the luxury of a candle; she wore no under garments, and had no sheet to cover her at night; she eschewed all rules of cleanliness, and appeared never so happy as when surrounded with filth and loathsomeness. She would frequently wander along the roads to beg of passers by, and always professed the utmost poverty. The demon of avarice was so strong within this covetous soul, that she was more than once detected in pilfering some trifling articles from her neighbours. One Tuesday the old woman was missed; she had not been observed to leave her room, and she had not been seen in her accustomed walks: Wednesday past, and the neighbours began to suspect that the old miser must be ill; they knocked at her door, but no voice replied; they waited for the morrow; and when the day had far advanced, and she did not appear, they got in at the window. They found her in bed alive, but speechless: with attention she revived a little, but on Saturday the old woman died. Her relatives were sent for, who on opening her drawers and chests found