Chapter C: H a P. XXVII

——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.

C H A P. XXVIII

“IT is with Love as with Cuckoldom”——the suffering party is at least the _third_, but generally the last in the house who knows any thing about the matter: this comes, as all the world knows, from having half a dozen words for one thing; and so long, as what in this vessel of the human frame, is _Love_—may be _Hatred_, in that——_Sentiment_ half a yard higher——and _Nonsense_———no, Madam,—not there——I mean at the part I am now pointing to with my forefinger——how can we help ourselves?

Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle _Toby_ was the worst fitted, to have push’d his researches, thro’ such a contention of feelings; and he had infallibly let them all run on, as we do worse matters, to see what they would turn out——had not _Bridget_’s pre-notification of them to _Susannah_, and _Susannah_’s repeated manifestoes thereupon to all the world, made it necessary for my uncle _Toby_ to look into the affair.