Read it through once

I was the eldest of seven children: our parents were in easy circumstances, and lived in considerable style; they had a genteel house, and genteel servants, and kept genteel company: for my father had spent the former part of his life as a merchant, and in speculating had contracted some fortune, which he chose to lay out upon himself and children in such a manner, that, during the greater part of my life, we lived genteelly at the expence of an easy competence.