Count Fathom, part 1 | Page 8

the talents of a pseudo-patron in power, accuse him of
insolence, rancour, and scurrility.
If such you be, courteous reader, I say again, have a little patience; for
your entertainment we are about to write. Our hero shall, with all
convenient despatch, be gradually sublimed into those splendid
connexions of which you are enamoured; and God forbid, that, in the
meantime, the nature of his extraction should turn to his prejudice in a
land of freedom like this, where individuals are every day ennobled in
consequence of their own qualifications, without the least retrospective
regard to the rank or merit of their ancestors. Yes, refined reader, we
are hastening to that goal of perfection, where satire dares not show her
face; where nature is castigated, almost even to still life; where humour
turns changeling, and slavers in an insipid grin; where wit is volatilised
into a mere vapour; where decency, divested of all substance, hovers
about like a fantastic shadow; where the salt of genius, escaping, leaves
nothing but pure and simple phlegm; and the inoffensive pen for ever
drops the mild manna of soul-sweetening praise.
CHAPTER TWO
A SUPERFICIAL VIEW OF OUR HERO'S INFANCY.
Having thus bespoken the indulgence of our guests, let us now produce
the particulars of our entertainment, and speedily conduct our
adventurer through the stage of infancy, which seldom teems with
interesting incidents.
As the occupations of his mother would not conveniently permit her to
suckle this her firstborn at her own breast, and those happy ages were
now no more, in which the charge of nursing a child might be left to the

next goat or she-wolf, she resolved to improve upon the ordinances of
nature, and foster him with a juice much more energetic than the milk
of goat, wolf, or woman; this was no other than that delicious nectar,
which, as we have already hinted, she so cordially distributed from a
small cask that hung before her, depending from her shoulders by a
leathern zone. Thus determined, ere he was yet twelve days old, she
enclosed him in a canvas knapsack, which being adjusted to her neck,
fell down upon her back, and balanced the cargo that rested on her
bosom.
There are not wanting those who affirm, that, while her double charge
was carried about in this situation, her keg was furnished with a long
and slender flexible tube, which, when the child began to be clamorous,
she conveyed into his mouth, and straight he stilled himself with
sucking; but this we consider as an extravagant assertion of those who
mix the marvellous in all their narrations, because we cannot conceive
how the tender organs of an infant could digest such a fiery beverage,
which never fails to discompose the constitutions of the most hardy and
robust. We therefore conclude that the use of this potation was more
restrained, and that it was with simple element diluted into a
composition adapted to his taste and years. Be this as it will, he
certainly was indulged in the use of it to such a degree as would have
effectually obstructed his future fortune, had not he been happily
cloyed with the repetition of the same fare, for which he conceived the
utmost detestation and abhorrence, rejecting it with loathing and
disgust, like those choice spirits, who, having been crammed with
religion in their childhood, renounce it in their youth, among other
absurd prejudices of education.
While he was thus dangled in a state of suspension, a German trooper
was transiently smit with the charms of his mother, who listened to his
honourable addresses, and once more received the silken bonds of
matrimony; the ceremony having been performed as usual at the
drum-head. The lady had no sooner taken possession of her new name,
than she bestowed it upon her son, who was thenceforward
distinguished by the appellation of Ferdinand de Fadom; nor was the
husband offended at this presumption in his wife, which he not only

considered as a proof of her affection and esteem, but also as a
compliment, by which he might in time acquire the credit of being the
real father of such a hopeful child.
Notwithstanding this new engagement with a foreigner, our hero's
mother still exercised the virtues of her calling among the English
troops, so much was she biassed by that laudable partiality, which, as
Horace observes, the natale solum generally inspires. Indeed this
inclination was enforced by another reason, that did not fail to
influence her conduct in this particular; all her knowledge of the High
Dutch language consisted in some words of traffic absolutely necessary
for the practice of hex vocation, together with sundry oaths and terms
of reproach, that kept her customers in awe; so that, except among her
own countrymen, she could not indulge