Chapter 21.00: Chapter viii. — A receipt to regain the lost affections of a wife, which hath never been known to fail in the most desperate cases.

**
Chapter viii. — A receipt to regain the lost affections of a wife,
which hath never been known to fail in the most desperate cases.
**

The captain was made large amends for the unpleasant minutes which he
passed in the conversation of his wife (and which were as few as he could
contrive to make them), by the pleasant meditations he enjoyed when alone.

These meditations were entirely employed on Mr Allworthy's fortune; for,
first, he exercised much thought in calculating, as well as he could, the
exact value of the whole: which calculations he often saw occasion to
alter in his own favour: and, secondly and chiefly, he pleased himself
with intended alterations in the house and gardens, and in projecting many
other schemes, as well for the improvement of the estate as of the
grandeur of the place: for this purpose he applied himself to the studies
of architecture and gardening, and read over many books on both these
subjects; for these sciences, indeed, employed his whole time, and formed
his only amusement. He at last completed a most excellent plan: and very
sorry we are, that it is not in our power to present it to our reader,
since even the luxury of the present age, I believe, would hardly match
it. It had, indeed, in a superlative degree, the two principal ingredients
which serve to recommend all great and noble designs of this nature; for
it required an immoderate expense to execute, and a vast length of time to
bring it to any sort of perfection. The former of these, the immense
wealth of which the captain supposed Mr Allworthy possessed, and which he
thought himself sure of inheriting, promised very effectually to supply;
and the latter, the soundness of his own constitution, and his time of
life, which was only what is called middle-age, removed all apprehension
of his not living to accomplish.

Nothing was wanting to enable him to enter upon the immediate execution of
this plan, but the death of Mr Allworthy; in calculating which he had
employed much of his own algebra, besides purchasing every book extant
that treats of the value of lives, reversions, &c. From all which he
satisfied himself, that as he had every day a chance of this happening, so
had he more than an even chance of its happening within a few years.

But while the captain was one day busied in deep contemplations of this
kind, one of the most unlucky as well as unseasonable accidents happened
to him. The utmost malice of Fortune could, indeed, have contrived nothing
so cruel, so mal-a-propos, so absolutely destructive to all his schemes.
In short, not to keep the reader in long suspense, just at the very
instant when his heart was exulting in meditations on the happiness which
would accrue to him by Mr Allworthy's death, he himself—died of an
apoplexy.

This unfortunately befel the captain as he was taking his evening walk by
himself, so that nobody was present to lend him any assistance, if indeed,
any assistance could have preserved him. He took, therefore, measure of
that proportion of soil which was now become adequate to all his future
purposes, and he lay dead on the ground, a great (though not a living)
example of the truth of that observation of Horace:

_Tu secanda marmora
Locas sub ipsum funus; et sepulchri
Immemor, struis domos. _

Which sentiment I shall thus give to the English reader: “You
provide the noblest materials for building, when a pickaxe and a spade are
only necessary: and build houses of five hundred by a hundred feet,
forgetting that of six by two.”