--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! peri-clitating, 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.
