——Bon jour!——good morrow!——so you have got your cloak on betimes!——but
’tis a cold morning, and you judge the matter rightly——’tis better to
be well mounted, than go o’ foot——and obstructions in the glands are
dangerous——And how goes it with thy concubine—thy wife,—and thy little
ones o’ both sides? and when did you hear from the old gentleman and
lady—your sister, aunt, uncle, and cousins——I hope they have got better
of their colds, coughs, claps, tooth-aches, fevers, stranguries,
sciaticas, swellings, and sore eyes.
——What a devil of an apothecary! to take so much blood—give such a vile
purge—puke—poultice—plaister—night-draught—clyster—blister?——And why so
many grains of calomel? santa Maria! and such a dose of opium!
periclitating, pardi! the whole family of ye, from head to tail——By my
great-aunt _Dinah_’s old black velvet mask! I think there is no
occasion for it.
Now this being a little bald about the chin, by frequently putting off
and on, _before_ she was got with child by the coachman—not one of our
family would wear it after. To cover the MASK afresh, was more than the
mask was worth——and to wear a mask which was bald, or which could be
half seen through, was as bad as having no mask at all——
This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that in all our
numerous family, for these four generations, we count no more than one
archbishop, a _Welch_ judge, some three or four aldermen, and a single
mountebank——
In the sixteenth century, we boast of no less than a dozen alchymists.