The remaining years of Steele's life need not detain us long. In 1723 he wrote to his eldest daughter, Betty, "I have taken a great deal of pains to serve the world, and hope God will allow me some time to serve my own family. My good girl, employ yourself always in some good work, that you may be as good a woman as your mother." A few days later Vanbrugh wrote, "Happening to meet with Sir Richard Steele t'other day at Mr. Walpole's in town, he seemed to me to be (at least) in the declining way I had heard he was." The complications arising from the mortgage of Steele's interest in the theatre still troubled him, and from the 18th of June the other managers each took, for his own use, £1 13s. 4d. for every day upon which a play was acted, an arrangement from which Steele was excluded. The success of _The Conscious Lovers_ encouraged Steele to endeavour to finish another play; and the newspapers reported that it would be acted that winter. This was _The School of Action_, which has for its scene a theatre, mistaken by a lady's guardian for an inn; but the piece was left in a very incomplete condition. There is also a fragment of another play, _The Gentleman_; it was a dramatised version of a paper in the _Spectator_ upon high life below stairs. In September illness forced Steele to go to Bath, and a few weeks later his only surviving son, Eugene, died. "Lord, grant me patience; pray write to me constantly," the father wrote to Betty: "Why don't you mention Molly? Is she dead, too?" In the spring of 1724 he was again in London, and in April a proposal for the payment of his debts was drawn up, from which it appears that, as he lived for more than five years afterwards, his liabilities were probably all met before his death. There was again reference to "a new play, which Sir Richard may produce next winter." In June an indenture quadrupartite was made between Steele, of the first part; Wilks, Cibber, and Booth, of the second part; a number of creditors, of the third part; and the Rev. David Scurlock, of the fourth part, to provide for the payment of debts out of Steele's share of the profits of the theatre. For this purpose Mr. Scurlock--Lady Steele's cousin--was appointed trustee.