RCANTILE INDIGESTION, WITH THE PRESCRIP TIONS OF AN EDINBURGH PROfessor. ene-Doctor's study. Enter a douce-looking Glasgow Merchant atient-Good morning, doctor; I'm just come in dinburgh about some law business, and I thought a I was here at ony rate I might just as weel tak advice, sir, anent my trouble. octor. And pray what may your trouble be, my sir? -Deed, doctor, I'm no very sure; but I'm ing it's a kind of weakness that makes me dizzy mes, and a kind of pinkling about my stomachno right. -You'r from the west country I should supsir? Yes, sir, from Glasgow. -Aye. Pray, sir, are you a gourmand-a on? God forbid, sir, I'm one of the plainest men g in all the west country. -Then perhaps you're a drunkard? -No, doctor, thank God no one can accuse me t; I'm of the Dissenting persuasion, doctor, and der, so ye may suppose I'm nae drunkard. -Aside-(I'll suppose no such thing till you e your mode of life.) I'm so much puzzled your symptoms, sir, that I should wish to hear in what you do eat and drink. When do you fast, and what do you take to it? I breakfast at nine o'clock. I tak a cup of , and one or two cups of tea; a couple of eggs, bit of ham or kipper'd salmon, or may be both, y're good, and two or three rolls and butter. -Do you eat no honey, or jelly, or jam, to fast? A yes, sir, but I don't count that as any Come, this is a very moderate breakfast. kind of dinner do vou make? Oh, sir, I eat a very plain dinner indeed. soup, and some fish, and a little plain roast or boiled; for I dinna care for made dishes; I think some way they never satisfy the appetite. Dr.-You take a little pudding then, and afterwards some cheese? Pa. O yes; though I don't care much about them. Dr.-You take a glass of ale or porter with your cheese? Pa.-Yes, one or the other, but seldom both. Dr.-You west-country people generally take a glass of Highland whiskey after dinner. Pa.-Yes, we do; it's good for digestion. Dr.-Do you take any wine during dinner? ferent as to wine during dinner. I drink a good deal Pa.-Yes, a glass or two of sherry; but I'm indif of beer. pose? Pa. No, sir, I canna be said to tak supper; just something before going to bed: a rizzer'd haddock, or a bit of toasted cheese, or half a hundred of oysters, or the like o'that; and, may be, two-thirds of a bottle of ale; but I tak no regular supper. Dr. But you take a little more punch after that. time. I tak a tumbler of warm whiskey toddy at Pa. No, sir, punch does not agree with me at bed night; it's lighter to sleep on. Dr. So it must be, no doubt. This you say, is your every-day life; but upon great occasions you perhaps exceed a little? THE HUMOROUS MAN. He occasions. I found him once bowing on the stairs to a poor alarmed devil of a rat, who was cringing up You shall know the man of humour by the vivacity in a corner; he was politely offering him the retreat of his eyes, the "morn-elastic" tread of his foot, honourable, with an "After you sir, if you would the lightness of his brow, and the dawning smile of honour me." I settled the point of etiquette, by pleasantry in his countenance. He is a man who kicking the rat down stairs, and received a frown cares for nothing so much as a mirth-moving jest;" from my humane friend, for my impatient inhumanity. give him that, and he has " food and raiment." His opinions of men and things have some spice of will not see what men have to cark and care for, be- singularity in them. He conceives it to be a list of yond to-day; he is for to-morrow's providing for puppyism in pigs that they wear toile He dennes himself. He is for a new reading of Ben Jonson's a great coat to be "a Spencer, folio edition, with old play of "Every Man in his Humour," he would tail-pieces." He calls Hercules a man-midwife, ra have it" Every Man in Humour." He leaves money a small way of business; because he had but twelve and misery, to misers; ambition and blood, to great labours. He can tell you why Horace ran away t warriors and low highwaymen; fame, to court-lau- the battle of Philippi: it was to prove to the Rereates and lord mayors; honours, to court-panders and mans that he was not a lame poet. He des city knights; the dread of death, to such as are not your critics to be a species of door-porters t worthy of life; the dread of heaven, to those who temple of fame; and says it is their business to are not good enough even for earth; the grave, to that no persons slip in with holes in their stock. 3 the parish-clerk and undertakers; tombs, to proud or paste buckles for diamond ones; not that worms; and palaces to paupers. It is enough for always perform this duty honestly. He calls the him if he may laugh the hours away;" and break" the yellow hair'd laddie," the prince of dark a jest, where tempers more humorous break a head." the Black Prince;" or, when he displeases He would not barter with you one wakeful jest for sense of virtue, “Monsieur De Vil," He wi a hundred sleepy sermons; or one laugh for a thou-you, "What is the distinctive difference between a sand sighs. If he could allow himself to sigh about sigh-heaver and a coal heaver ?" You can tak¿'» any thing, it would be that he had been serious when he might have laughed; if he could weep for any thing, it would be for mankind, because they will not laugh more and mourn less. Yet he hath tears If he quotes a proverb at all, it is "with: 5 for the pitiable, the afflicted, the orphan, and the ference;" such as "Cobbler, stick to your war unhappy; but his tears die where they are born, a thing more practicable than sticking to hľ in his heart; he makes no show of them; like April the old proverb adviseth. He will say, “We a showers, they refresh where they fall, and turn to bred in the bone will not come out with the sheem' smiles, as all tears will, that are not selfish. His-which, to those Epicurean persons who bra grief has a humanity in it, which is not satisfied with tears only; it teaches him he tells you, "a coal-heaver has a load as buy bes which he can carry; a sigh-heaver has one al heart, which he can not carry." magpie propensity of prying into marrow-bones, a simplify the proverb to their fatheaded arg sions. Some one used that very trite od pr his hearing, of necessity having no laws: the wilfully misunderstanding it, he remarked. 1 very sorry for it; it is surely a pity, c number of "the learned clerks" she might s ploy to, if she had. Her chancellor we no sinecure of it, I trow; hearing the pet THE LAUGHING PHILOSOPHER. her poor, broken-fortuned, and bankrupt subjects, | tlemanly income of oaths, and then have sworn by would take up all his terms, though every term were private subscription; an absent man, had he been present, would perhaps have thrown his young son a year, and every year a term." and heir, or his gold watch and seals, at her; another, perhaps, his wig ;-he contented himself with saying, I have two or three doubts, (which I shall put forth as much in the shape of a half-crown pamphlet as possible,) as to the propriety of your conduct in eating my mutton;" and then he brushed her off with his handkerchief, supped on half a French roll and a gooseberry, and went happy to bed. He is a polite man, though a wit; which is not what wits usually are; they would rather lose a life than a joke. I have heard him express his detestation of those wits who sport with venomed weapons, and wish them the fate of Laertes, who, in his encounter with Hamlet, got his weapon changed, and was himself wounded with the poisoned foil he had designed for his antagonist. I mean by saying he is a polite man, that he is naturally, not artificially, pofte; for the one is but a handsome, frank-looking mask, under which you conceal the contempt you feel for the person you seem most diligent to please; it is gilt-edged envelope to a blank valentine; a shell without a nut; a courtesan in a fair Quaker's chaste atinity and smooth sleckness; the arch devil in a omino;-the other is, as he describes it, taking the at and cloak of your heart off, and standing unvered and unconcealed in the presence of worth, auty, or any one amiable quality. Some of his jokes have a practicality about them; but they neither have the quarter-staff jocoseness of Robin Hood, that brake heads let them be never so obtuse and profound; nor the striking effect of that flourishing sprig of the Green Isle, that knocks down friend and foe with a partiality truly impartial. He is no respecter of persons: the beggar may "between the have a joke of him, (and something better,) though Those handmaids of Pothey do not happen to apply exactly hours of eleven and four. mona, who vend their fruits about the streets. seem, In short, he is a humane man; and humanity is by their voices, to be legitimate daughters of old ar only true politeness. I have seen him ridicule Stentor; more especially shall I specify those damat politeness which contents itself with bowing and sels who sell walnuts. To one of these our humorist ck-bending, very humorously. In walking through once addressed himself" to the effect following:' garden, a tree or tall flower, touched by the" Pray, Mrs. Jones, will you crack me fifty walnuts sing wind, bowed its head towards him; his hat with the same voice you cry them with ?" At dinner there is purposely but one glass on the 3 off, and the bow was returned with an old-school moniousness and etiquette that would, perhaps, table; his lady apologizes for her seeming negligence; e cured Lord Chesterfield, that fine polisher of Time, my dear, hath no more than one glass; viors, of some of his hollow-nutted notions of and yet he contrives to see all his guests under the iders. In this spirit, I saw him bow very pro-table-kings, lord-mayors, and pot-boys." Jly to the giants, as he passed by St. Dunstan's ch-He had asked his friend Hobbes or Dobbs not which) what was the hour? Before es could reply, the giants had informed him. ank you, gentlemen," said he, bowing to them a graceful humour. now have said he is a humane man. He once detected utimate cat picking his cold mutton," on a slack the day!" for he was then too poor to it well. Some men would have thrown a poker ; others would have squandered away a gen If he lends you a book, for the humour of the thing, he will request you, as you love clean shoes on a lord-mayor's day, to make no thumb-and-butter references in the margin; and will, moreover, ask you whether you have studied that modern" art of book-keeping," which has superseded the "Italian method," viz. of never returning the books you borrow? He has a very ingenious mode of putting names and significations on what he calls the brain-rack, and dislocating their joints into words: thus torture and broke into pieces, Themistocles loses his quality, | full length, his hands across his breast, his toes i but increases his quantity, and becomes the Miss contact, his eyes and mouth closely shut, and bis Tokeleys; the Cyclades, by the same disorder, be- looks cadaverous. come sick ladies; a "delectable enjoyment" is a deal-legged-table pleasure; &c. &c. pun without end. These are what he denominates punlings. "Well, sir, how do you do, this morning !” asked Dr Stevenson, in a jocular way, approaching his ba "How do I do ?" replied the hypochondriac faste For his puns, they fall as thick from him as leaves a pretty question to ask a dead man." "Dea from autumn-bowers. Sometime since, he talked of replied the doctor. 'Yes, sir, dead, quite dead. I petitioning for the office of pun-purveyor to his ma- died last night about twelve o'clock." jesty; but ere he had written "and your petitioner Dr. Stevenson putting his hand gently on the shall ever" pun, it was bestowed on the yeoman of bead of the hypochondriac, as if to ascertain we the guard. He still, however, talks of opening busi- it was cold, and also feeling his pulse, exciamst Dess as " pun-wright in general to his Majesty's a doleful note, "Yes, the poor man is dead c subjects," for the diffusion of that pleasant small-'tis all over with him, and now the sooner he can ware of wit; and intends to advertise" puns whole-buried the better." Then stepping up to his sale, retail, and for exportation. N. B. 1.-A liberal and whispering to her not to be frightened at f allowance made to captains and gentlemen going to measures he was about to take, he called to the the East or West Indies. Hooks, Peakes, and Po- vant; My boy, your poor master is dead; and cocks, supplied on moderate terms. Worn-out senti- sooner he can be put in the ground the better. ments and clap-traps taken in exchange. N. B. 2.-to C-m, for I know he always keeps Men Er: -May be had in a large quantity in a great deal box, coffins by him ready made; and do you her, price five acts of sterling comedy, per packet; or in a coffin of the largest size, for your master mak small quantities in court-plaster-sized boxes, price stout corpse, and having died last night, a one melodrama and an interlude, per box-N. B. 3. weather being warm, he will not keep long -The genuine are sealed with a Munden grin; all others are counterfeits. Long live Apollo !" &c. &c. the Away went the servant, and soon returned w proper coffin. The wife and family having g lesson from the doctor, gathered arowed l howled not a little while they were putting t in the coffin. Presently the pall-bearers, w quickly provided and let into the secret, star the hypochondriac for the church-yand. T** not gone far, before they were met by ca town's people, who, having been properly dra Stevenson, cried out, “Ah, doctor, what f have you got there?" "Poor Mr. Blast night." "sighed the doctor, -15% "Great pity he had not left us twenty year 4* replied the other; "he was a bad man." Presently another of the townsmen met da the same question, " And what poor seal be got there, docter ?" "Poor Mr. B"is dead." answered the dects 'Ah! indeed," said the other; "and so he is gone | I could for ever here with wonder gaze; to meet his deserts at last." "Q, villain!" exclaimed the man in the coffin. Soon after this, while the pall-bearers were resting themselves near the church-yard, another stepped up with the old question again, "What poor soul have you got there, doctor?" Poor Mr. B-," he replied, " is gone." "Yes and to the bottomless pit," said the other; for if he is not gone there, I see not what use there s for such a place." Here the dead man, bursting the lid of the coffin, which had been purposely eft loose, leaped out, exclaiming, " O, you villain! am gone to the bottomless pit am I? Well, I have me back again, to pay such ungrateful rascals as > are." A chase was immediately commenced, by e dead man after the living, to the petrifying conernation of many of the spectators, at sight of a pse, in all the horrors of the winding sheet, rung through the streets. After having exercised self into a copious perspiration by the fantastic e, the hypochondriac was brought home by Dr. venson, freed from all his complaints; and by engthening food, generous wine, cheerful company, moderate exercise, was soon restored to perfect lth. PROLOGUE TO BARBAROSSA. 1 ne'er saw a church so full, in all my days!— [Laughing. I donna like your London tricks, not I; I came from country here to try my fate, And got a place with one o' th' corporation. hen by Garrick, in the character of a Country I'll back to whoame and country fare again. ster! measter! Boy. I left toad-eater; then I serv'd a lord, Now I'm the poet's mon-I find with wits [There's nothing sartain-nay, we eat by fits. |