_According to the Style and Manner of the Hon. Robert Boyle's
Meditations_.
This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that
neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest. It was
full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs; but now in vain does the
busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle
of twigs to its sapless trunk; it is now at best but the reverse of what
it was, a tree turned upside-down, the branches on the earth, and the
root in the air; it is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do
her drudgery, and, by a capricious kind of fate, destined to make other
things clean, and be nasty itself; at length, worn to the stumps in the
service of the maids, it is either thrown out of doors or condemned to
the last use--of kindling a fire. When I behold this I sighed, and said
within myself, "Surely mortal man is a broomstick!" Nature sent him into
the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair
on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, till the
axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a
withered trunk; he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing
himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that
never grew on his head; but now should this our broomstick pretend to
enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all
covered with dust, through the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we
should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we
are of our own excellencies, and other men's defaults!
But a broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree standing
on its head; and pray what is a man but a topsy-turvy creature, his
animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his
heels should be, grovelling on the earth? And yet, with all his faults,
he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover
of grievances, rakes into every slut's corner of nature, bringing hidden
corruptions to the light, and raises a mighty dust where there was none
before, sharing deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he
pretends to sweep away. His last days are spent in slavery to women, and
generally the least deserving; till, worn to the stumps, like his brother
besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to kindle flames
for others to warm themselves by.