Isaac Bickerstaff | Page 8

knowing, though more innocent, as they who live to fifty; and after death they have as perfect a memory and judgment of all that passed in their lifetime as I have of all the revolutions in that uneasy, turbulent condition of yours; and you would say I had enough of it in a month were I to tell you all my misfortunes." "A life of a month cannot have, one would think, much variety. But pray," said I, "let us have your story."
Then he proceeds in the following manner:--
"It was one of the most wealthy families in Great Britain into which I was born, and it was a very great happiness to me that it so happened, otherwise I had still, in all probability, been living; but I shall recount to you all the occurrences of my short and miserable existence, just as, by examining into the traces made in my brain, they appeared to me at that time. The first thing that ever struck my senses was a noise over my head of one shrieking; after which, methought, I took a full jump, and found myself in the hands of a sorceress, who seemed as if she had been long waking and employed in some incantation: I was thoroughly frightened, and cried out; but she immediately seemed to go on in some magical operation, and anointed me from head to foot. What they meant I could not imagine; for there gathered a great crowd about me, crying, 'An heir! an heir!' upon which I grew a little still, and believed this was a ceremony to be used only to great persons, and such as made them, what they called Heirs. I lay very quiet; but the witch, for no manner of reason or provocation in the world, takes me, and binds my head as hard as possibly she could; then ties up both my legs, and makes me swallow down a horrid mixture. I thought it a harsh entrance into life, to begin with taking physic; but I was forced to it, or else must have taken down a great instrument in which she gave it me. When I was thus dressed, I was carried to a bedside, where a fine young lady, my mother I wot, had like to have hugged me to death. From her they faced me about, and there was a thing with quite another look from the rest of the room, to whom they talked about my nose. He seemed wonderfully pleased to see me; but I knew since, my nose belonged to another family. That into which I was born is one of the most numerous amongst you; therefore crowds of relations came every day to congratulate my arrival; among others my cousin Betty, the greatest romp in nature; she whisks me such a height over her head that I cried out for fear of falling. She pinched me, and called me squealing chit, and threw me into a girl's arms that was taken in to tend me. The girl was very proud of the womanly employment of a nurse, and took upon her to strip and dress me a-new, because I made a noise, to see what ailed me; she did so, and stuck a pin in every joint about me. I still cried; upon which she lays me on my face in her lap; and, to quiet me, fell a-nailing in all the pins by clapping me on the back and screaming a lullaby. But my pain made me exalt my voice above hers, which brought up the nurse, the witch I first saw, and my grandmother. The girl is turned downstairs, and I stripped again, as well to find what ailed me as to satisfy my grandam's farther curiosity. This good old woman's visit was the cause of all my troubles. You are to understand that I was hitherto bred by hand, and anybody that stood next gave me pap, if I did but open my lips; insomuch that I was grown so cunning as to pretend myself asleep when I was not, to prevent my being crammed. But my grandmother began a loud lecture upon the idleness of the wives of this age, who, for fear of their shape, forbear suckling their own offspring; and ten nurses were immediately sent for; one was whispered to have a wanton eye, and would soon spoil her milk; another was in a consumption; the third had an ill voice, and would frighten me instead of lulling me to sleep. Such exceptions were made against all but one country milch-wench, to whom I was committed, and put to the breast. This careless jade was eternally romping with the footman and downright starved me; insomuch that I daily pined away, and should never have