I was, on the sudden, a rich young man, with nothing on earth to trouble me. I had lands and houses, rich plantations, a nation or two of negroes, herds of sheep and cattle, with mills, fisheries, and some half dozen or more gold-mines, which last--and it may be considered, out of Virginia, a wondrous evidence of my wealth--were decidedly the least valuable of all my possessions. With all these things I was made acquainted by my sister Ann, or otherwise, it is highly probable, I should have known nothing about them; for during the whole period of my seventh existence, I confined myself to my property in the village, not having the least curiosity to visit my plantations, which, as everybody told me, were in good hands. In the village itself I had every thing about me to secure happiness--a fine house, abundance of servants, the whole under the management of the best of housekeepers, my sister Ann, with horses and carriages--for which, however, I cared but little, thinking it laborious to ride, and as tedious to be driven--and, above all, friends without number, who treated me with a respect amounting to veneration (for, it must be remembered, I was the richest man in the county), and with a degree of affection little short of idolatry; but whom, however, I thought very troublesome, tiresome people, seeing that they visited me too often, and wearied me to death with long conversations about every thing. Among them all, there was but one for whom I felt any friendship; and he was a young doctor named Tibbikens, for whom my sister Ann had a great respect, and who had been retained by her to assist in taking care of my digestive apparatus--that same digestive apparatus of mine being a hobby on which my sister lavished more thought and anxiety than I believe she did upon her own soul--not meaning to reflect upon her religion, however, for she was a member of the Presbyterian church, and quite devout about the time of communion. The cause of her solicitude, as she gave me frequent opportunity to know by her allusion to the fact, was her having been once afflicted in her own person with a disorder of the digestive apparatus, which it had been the good fortune of Doctor Tibbikens to cure by a regimen of bran bread and hickory ashes water; and hence her affection for the doctor and the remedy. I liked the doctor myself because he had the same solicitude about my health, without troubling me with advice except when I asked it, or finding much fault when I did not follow it; because his conversation was agreeable, except when he was in a scientific humour, and did not require any efforts on my part to keep it up; because he liked terapins and white-backs as well as myself, and was of opinion they were wholesome, provided one ate them in moderation; and, in fine, because he took pains to help me to amusement, and was of great assistance in dissipating somewhat of that tedium which was the first evil with which I was afflicted in the body of Mr.