tender-hearted, permitted to lavish immoderate fondness on animals, the care of which engrossed her whole attention, and greatly interrupted her education; so that, instead of studying natural history and other useful things, her time was taken up with pampering and attending upon animals which she considered as the most important business in life.
Her children fell into faults of a different nature. Miss Addis being, as I observed in the former part of this history, left to the care of servants, grew up with very contracted notions. Amongst other prejudices, she imbibed that of being afraid of spiders, frogs, and other harmless things; and having been bitten by the monkey, and terrified by the cat when it went mad, she extended her fears to every kind of creature, and could not take a walk in the fields, or even in the street, without a thousand apprehensions. And at last her constitution, which from bad nursing had become very delicate, was still more weakened by her continual apprehensions; and a rat happening to run across the path as she was walking, she fell into fits, which afflicted her at intervals during the remainder of her life.
Edward Addis, as soon as he became sensible of his mother's foible, conceived an inveterate hatred
