Nor was the act by any means improper. The _lapses of his memory_ had now become frequent and glaring. All recent occurrences he forgot entirely; and as he never committed any thing to writing, the confusion he made was inexpressible. As an instance of this, the following anecdote may serve. He had one evening given a draft on Messrs. Hoares, his bankers, for twenty pounds; and having taken it into his head, during the night, that he had over-drawn his account, his anxiety was unceasing. He left his bed, and walking about his room with that _little feverish irritation_ that always distinguished him, waited with the utmost impatience till morning came, when, on going to his banker, with an apology for the great liberty he had taken, he was assured there was no occasion for his apology, as he happened to have in their hands, at that time, the small sum of _fourteen thousand seven hundred pounds_! Mr. Elwes passed the summer of 1788 at his house in Welbeck-Street, London, without any other society than that of two maid servants: for he had now given up the expense of keeping any male domestic. His chief employment used to be that of getting up early in the morning to visit his houses in Marybone, which during the summer were repairing. As he was there generally at four o'clock in the morning, he was of course on the spot before the workmen; and he used contentedly to sit down on the steps before the door to scold them when they did come. The neighbours, who used to see him appear thus regularly every morning, and who concluded, from his apparel, he was one of the workmen, observed, "there never was so punctual a man as the _old carpenter_." During the whole morning he would continue to run up and down stairs, to see the men were not idle for an instant, with the same anxiety as if his whole happiness in life had been centred in the finishing this house, regardless of the greater property he had at stake in various places, and for ever employed in the _minutiæ_ only of affairs. Indeed, such was his anxiety about this house, the rent of which was not above fifty pounds a year, that it brought on a fever, which nearly cost him his life.