_How the Nurse dreamt that =John Bull= had banished all the weavers._
We may believe that after so busy a day, as we have been describing,
the Nurse was not likely to get a very good night’s rest; starting,
tumbling and tossing she had in abundance, but very little sound sleep.
She could not shut an eye, but presently she dreamt of some mischief
or other. One time she thought the pan boiled over in the fire; at
another time, that the cat’s paw was in the custard; and finally, about
three o’clock in the morning, she dreamt that John Bull had banished
all the weavers from his house; she saw the beams, the tradles, the
shuttles, the pirns, all tumbled in a heap into a great black boat; she
saw all the weavers posting to embark. When she would have seized a
piece of broad cloth, behold it was a great iron cannon! When she put
out her hand to save a pirn, lo, it perked up in her face in the make
of a pistol! Terror and amazement awaked her; she forgot her resolution
never to talk any more to John Bull about his affairs, and thought
herself now called upon by heaven, to interpose in behalf of him and
his children.
Accordingly, she lost no time in the morning, but went straight to the
parlour, where she found John as busy as ever, talking about the orders
he was to give in his house: and having told him her dream, earnestly
beseeched him to tell her, whether he had any such intention, with
relation to the weavers; for she thought that a person, who had ceased
to be guided by her, would stick at nothing.
“The woman is crazy,” says John: “I am only thinking how I may best
secure the peace and welfare of my family, and how to keep off rogues;
and you ask me, if I am to banish my weavers? I’ll defend my weavers
to the last drop of my blood; they shall fare no worse than I do; late
or early, if they are molested, I shall be with them, and I know that
they will stand by me against all the world.”
“What better protection can you desire for yourself or them,” says the
nurse, “than your own game-keeper, or Rousterdivel? It would do one
good to see, how that fine tall fellow will stop and turn, and do what
he is bid.”
“A plague take the woman,” says John, “with her Rousterdivel; do
you think that I am a coward, a scoundrel, a beast, a blockhead, a
milk-sop, that I must always run for protection to other people? I tell
you again, that I am able to defend myself, and that I have people
enow about my house to stand by me.”
“And how do you propose that they should stand by you?” says the nurse:
“When Lewis sends over his game-keepers, with their guns and their
sabres, who will stand by you then?”
“Odso,” says John, “cannot my people have guns and sabres as well as
they?”
“Alas! then,” says the nurse, “my dream is read. You will not have a
weaver in your house in three days, if you go on at that rate: who do
you think will sit quietly on a loom, with guns and pistols pointing
at them in every corner, and that boy George putting crackers in
the candles, and firing his pistols at sparrows, and shooting the
neighbours cats when they come about the hedges? See who can settle
to work for you, if they are in perpetual danger of having their eyes
blown out with squibs, serpents and rackets? Do you think a tradesman
can do any good if he is scared at that rate?”
“Scared!” says John, “you don’t think that a weaver will be scared when
he turns game-keeper, and I have none better on my grounds. If any of
my people are afraid of a gun, so much the more shame to them and to
me; it is the very thing I want to correct, by using them a little to
what may be necessary for their own defence and mine.”
“Worse and worse,” says the nurse: “if you use them to guns, you’ll
never get them to work a jot; and banishing the trade is worse than
banishing the men.”
“A tenfold madness has seized your pericranium,” says John; “do you
think that nobody can make broad cloth but cowards; or that a fellow
won’t work, because he knows he can defend the fruits of his labour?
You have no objection to the taking as many of my tradesmen as you can
get, to make game-keepers of them; and because they work none, you
imagine that every fellow who takes a firelock in his hand to defend
himself and me, is to be idle too. Don’t the game-keepers themselves
work when they are allowed, and are paid for it? have not I known them
give money to their overseers, for leave to work at their own trades?
and many a good penny has been got in that way. As my people are useful
to me, and to themselves, I intend that they shall work in safety, and
that nobody shall insult an honest tradesman of mine, whilst they and
I have breath in our bodies. Do what you will, you shall never get me
disgraced as you have done, with your idle jaw and nonsensical trash.”
“Bless me,” says the nurse, “what a wild project you have got in your
head! You’ll tell me you want to defend your house and your estate; but
to what purpose keep your estate, if you cannot find time, so much as
to eat a bit of warm victuals; hurried late and early, banged, soused
and drenched in all weathers, and this for fear that Lewis Baboon
should turn you out of your possessions; and what matter who has your
possessions, if you cannot sit down to enjoy them? _Et propter vitam
vivendi perdere causas._”
“Hey-day,” says John, “your humble servant, Latin! I remember you of
old.” “But goody,” says he, “I knew you lived among the boys; but don’t
think to palm upon me as a commendation of eating and drinking and
cowardice, what the old boy for whom I have so often been whipped, damn
him, has said against a fellow who would forfeit his honour to preserve
his life.”
“Well then,” says the nurse, “see how you can keep your bargain
with Sir Thomas. What will he say, when he sees your house swarming
with pistols and carabines, and cutlasses? you know that he does not
chuse to trust any body in this house with gun-powder, except the
game-keeper.”
“Blood-and-wounds,” says John, “you are more mindful of Sir Thomas
than you are of me. I have heard nothing from you these twenty years,
but Sir Thomas does not like this, and Sir Thomas does not like that.
I was advised to take Sir Thomas into the management of my affairs,
because Squire Geoffrey endeavoured to get a game-keeper of his own,
and do what he pleased about my house. And now you tell me, that Sir
Thomas and the game-keeper are the only people to be trusted. Those
gentlemen, it seems, will trust nobody else, and who the devil will
trust them? I never knew any of those suspicious people, that was much
to be trusted himself. Ill doers are ill dreaders, as my sister Peg
says. Odso, if Sir Thomas does not think himself safe in my parlour
with me and my children, he must know of something worse than I thought
of. Who was it that brought him about the house? Have not I done all
that lay in my power for him? And now you and he won’t let me defend
myself, because he won’t trust me. I love Sir Thomas; I mean, that he
shall have the disposal of all the arms about my house, and he shall
find that I am his friend, when Hubble-bubble and you are in your
graves, and all the nonsense you are perpetually putting in his head
and mine, is not worth a curse.”