MERCANTILE INDIGESTION, WITH THE PRESCRIP TIONS OF AN EDINBURGH PROFESSOR. Scene-Doctor's study. Enter a douce-looking Glasgow Merchant Patient-Good morning, doctor; I'm just come in to Edinburgh about some law business, and I thought when I was here at ony rate I might just as weel tak your advice, sir, anent my trouble. Doctor. And pray what may your trouble be, my good sir? Pa.-'Deed, doctor, I'm no very sure; but I'm thinking it's a kind of weakness that makes me dizzy at times, and a kind of pinkling about my stomachjust no right. Dr.-You'r from the west country I should suppose, sir? Pray, sir, are you a gourmand-a Pa.-Yes, sir, from Glasgow. Dr.-Aye. glutton? Pa.-God forbid, sir, I'm one of the plainest men living in all the west country. Dr.-Then perhaps you're a drunkard? Pa. No, doctor, thank God no one can accuse me of that; I'm of the Dissenting persuasion, doctor, and an elder, so ye may suppose I'm nae drunkard. Dr.-Aside-(I'll suppose no such thing till you tell me your mode of life.) I'm so much puzzled with your symptoms, sir, that I should wish to hear in detail what you do eat and drink. When do you breakfast, and what do you take to it? Pa.-I breakfast at nine o'clock. I tak a cup of coffee, and one or two cups of tea; a couple of eggs, and a bit of ham or kipper'd salmon, or may be both, if they're good, and two or three rolls and butter. Dr.-Do you eat no honey, or jelly, or jam, to breakfast? Pa.- yes, sir, but I don't count that as any thing. Dr.-Come, this is a very moderate breakfast. What kind of dinner do vou make? Pa.--Oh, sir, I eat a very plain dinner indeed. Some 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 after wards 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. Pa. Yes, a glass or two of sherry; but I'm indifferent as to wine during dinner. I drink a good deal of beer. Dr.-What quantity of port do you drink? Pa.--Oh, very little; not above half a dozen glasses Pa.-Yes, before I go to the counting-house to read the evening letters. Dr.-And on your return you take supper, suppose? 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? Pa. No, sir, except when a friend or two dine with me, or I dine out, which, as I am a sober family man, does not often happen. Dr. Not above twice a-week? Dr. Of course you sleep well, and have a good appetite? Pa.-Yes, sir-thank God I have-indeed, any wee harl o'health that I hae is about meal time. Dr.-Sir, you are not obliged to me-put up your money, sir.-Do you think I'll take a fee from you for telling you what you knew as well as myself? Though you're no physician, sir, you are not altogether a fool. You have read your Bible, and must know that drunkenness and gluttony are both sinful and dangerous, and whatever you may think, you have this day confessed to me that you are a notorious glutton and drunkard. Go home, sir, and reform, or take my word for it your life is not worth half a year's purchase. (Exit Patient, dum-founded and looking blue.) Dr.-(Solus.) Sober and temperate !-Dr. Watt tried to live in Glasgow, and make his patients live moderately, and purged and bled them when they were sick; but it would not do. Let the Glasgow doctors prescribe beef-steaks and rum punch, and their fortune is made. UPON A CERTAIN LORD'S GIVING SOME THOUSANDS FOR A HOUSE. BY MR. GARRICK. So many thousands for a house For you-of all the world-Lord Mouse! Dr.-(Assuming a severe look, knitting his brows, and lowering his eye-brows.)-Now, sir, you are a very pretty fellow, indeed; you come here and tell me that you are a moderate man, and I might have believed you, did I not know the nature of the people in your part of the country; but upon examination I find by your own showing, that you are a most voracious glutton; you breakfast in the morning in a style that would serve a moderate man for dinner; and from five o'clock in the afternoon you undergo one almost uninterrupted loading of your stomach till you go to bed. This is your moderation! You told me too another falsehood-you said you were a sober man, yet by your own showing you are a beer swiller, a dram-drinker, a wine-bibber, and a guzzler of Glasgow punch; a liquor, the name of which is associated, in my mind, only with the ideas of low company and beastly intoxication. You tell me you eat indigestible suppers, and swill toddy to force sleep-I see that you chew tobacco. Now, sir, what human stomach can stand this?-Go home, sir, and leave off your present course of riotous living--take some dry toast and tea to your breakfast-some plain meat and soup for dinner, without adding to it any thing to spur on your flagging appetite; you may take a cup of tea in the evening, but One day, when Betterton called on Archbishop never let me hear of haddocks and toasted cheese, and Tillotson, at Lambeth, the prelate asked him; "How oysters, with their accompaniments of ale and toddy it came about, that after he had made the most movat night; give up chewing that vile-narcotic-ing discourse that he could, was touched deeply with nauseous-abomination, and there are some hopes that your stomach may recover its tone, and you be in good health like your neighbours. Pa.-I'm sure, doctor, I'm very much obliged to you-(taking out a bunch of Bank-notes)-I shall endeavour to ORIGIN OF BUMPER. When the English were good Catholics, they usually drank the Pope's health in a full glass after dinner: au bon père; whence our bumper, THE PULPIT AND THE STAGE. it himself, and spoke it as feelingly as he was able; yet he could never move people in the church, near so much as the other did on the stage?"-"That," says Betterton, "I think is easy to be accounted for: it is because you are only telling them a story, and I am showing them facts." POOR ROBIN'S PROPHECY. When girls prefer old lovers, When merchants scoff at gain, When Porson's skull discovers What pass'd in Porson's brain: When farms contain no growlers, No pig-tail Wapping-wall, Then spread your lark-nets, fowlers, For sure the sky will fall. When Boston men love banter, When loan contractors sleep, When Chancery pleadings canter, And common-law ones creep. When topers swear that claret's The vilest drink of all; Then housemaids, quit your garrets, For sure the sky will fall. When Southey leagues with Wooller When dandies show no shape, When fiddler's heads are fuller Than that whereon they scrape: When doers turn to talkers, And Quakers love a ball; Then hurry home, street-walkers, For sure the sky will fall. When lads from Cork or Newry Won't broach a whisky flask, When comedy at Drury Again shall lift her mask : When peerless Kitty utters Her airs in tuneless squall, Then, cats, desert your gutters, For sure the sky will fall. When worth dreads no detractor, Wit thrives at Amsterdam, And manager and actor Lie down like kid and lamb; When bard with bard embraces, And critics cease to maul, Then, travellers, mend your paces, For sure the sky will fall. When men who leave off business Then, poachers, prowl for pheasants, A FLAT REFUSAL. Salvini the Spaniard was an odd sort of man, subject to gross absences, and a very great sloven. His behaviour in his last hours was as odd as any of his actions in all his lifetime before could have been. Just as he was departing, he cried out in a great passion, "I will not die! I will not die, that's flat." QUESTION AND ANSWER. "Can you, by any means, the cause divine, ITALIAN PLAY AND BARBER SURGEON. Spence, the friend and contemporary of Pope, in a letter to his mother, from Turin, in 1739, gives the following account of an Italian entertainment: "Here under the porticoes of the charitable Hospital for such as have the Venereal Disease, will be represented this evening, The Damned Soul: with proper decorations." "As this seemed to be one of the greatest curiosities I could possibly meet with in my travels, I immediately paid my threepence, was showed in with great civility, and took my seat among a number of people, who seemed to expect the tragedy of the night with great seriousness. "At length the curtain drew up, and discovered the Damned Soul, all alone, with a melancholy aspect. She was (for what reason I don't know) drest like a fine lady, in a gown of flame-coloured satin. She held a white handkerchief in her hand, which she applied often to her eyes; and in this attitude, with a lamentable voice, began a prayer (to the holy and time. thousand years; and she was very thankful for the mildness of the sentence. ever blessed Trinity) to enable her to speak her part well: afterwards she addressed herself to all the good Christians in the room; begged them to attend "The seventh (and last) scene was a contest becarefully to what she had to say, and heartily wished tween the two infernal devils above-mentioned, and they would be the better for it: she then gave an her guardian angel. They came in again, one grinaccount of her life; and, by her own confession, ap-ning, and the other open-mouthed to devour her. peared to have been a very naughty woman in her The angel told them, that they should get about their business. He with some difficulty at last drove them This was the first scene. At the second, a back off the stage, and handed off the good lady; in ascurtain was drawn; and gave us a sight of our Sa-suring her that all would be very well, after some viour and the blessed Virgin, amidst the clouds. hundreds of thousand of years, with her. The poor soul addressed herself to our Saviour first, "All this while, in spite of the excellence of the who rattled her extremely, and was indeed all the actors, the greatest part of the entertainment to me while very severe. All she desired was to be sent was the countenances of the people in the pit and to purgatory, instead of going to hell: and she at boxes. When the devils were like to carry her off, last begged very hard to be sent into the fire of the every body was in the utmost consternation; and former, for as many years as there are drops of water when St. John spoke so obligingly to her, they were in the sea. As no favour was shown her on that ready to cry out for joy. When the Virgin appeared side, she turned to the Virgin and begged her to inter-on the stage, every Lody looked respectful; and on cede for her. The Virgin was a very decent woman, several words spoke by the actors, they pulled off and answered her gravely but steadily, That she their hats, and crossed themselves. What can you had enraged her son so much, that she could do think of a people, where their very farces are religinothing for her' and on this, they both went away ous, and where they are so religiously received? May together. you be the better for reading of it, as I was for seeing it! "The third scene consisted of three little angels and the damned soul. She had no better luck with them: nor with St. John the Baptist and all the saints in the fourth so, in the fifth, she was left to two devils; seemingly to do what they would with her. One of these devils was very ill-natured and fierce to her; the other was of the droll kind, and, for a devil, I can't say but what he was good-natured enough: though he delighted in vexing the poor lady rather too much. "In the sixth scene, matters began to mend a little. St. John the Baptist (who had been with our Saviour I believe behind the scenes) told her, if she would continue her entreaties, there was yet some hope for her. She on this again besought our Saviour and the Virgin to have compassion on her: the Virgin was melted with her tears, and desired her son to have pity on her; on which it was granted, that she should go into the fire, only for sixteen or seventeen hundred All "There was but one thing that offended me. the actors, except the devils, were women: and the person who represented the most venerable character in the whole play, just after the representation, came into the pit, and fell a kissing a barber of her acquaintance, before she had changed her dress. She did me the honour to speak to me too; but I would have nothing to say to her. My old surgeon," continues Spence, "I found to be the oddest figure, and one of the oddest men, that ever I met with in my life. He is a mountaineer, born amidst the Alps, and as learned as the people generally are among wild mountains. He is a short man, fat, and clumsy, with a great pair of Dutch trowsers to his posteriors, and with a face, that does not at all yield, for breadth or swarthiness, to the place abovementioned. His face was overrun with beard; for he said he was obliged to go to mass, and so had not time to be shaved. In his face, or his upper breech, | deal of mischief here at Turin. And did he shave whichever you please to call it, were a pair of little ever a one of his elephants, master Claude?'-Not merry eyes, deep in his head, but yet with a droll that I know of, says he; but our day-book says, that gay air in them: and the two little caves that go this same Hannibal had to do with the devil; that down to them are wrinkled all the way up to his he put life into castles; and made the castles walk forehead and his temple. Whenever he laughs, (which over the mountains with him against the Romans: is very often,) all these wrinkles are in motion toge- and he says, in a note on the side, that he heard afterther, and make one of the most diverting sights that wards, that these castles fought like mad things; can be imagined. When we were a little seated and that any one of them that had not killed his together, and jolted into our proper places by the hundred of Romans, was very little regarded in the chaise; Is it a long time, master Claude, (says I) army. He then took out a prayer-book; and prayed that you have been in this sort of business?' Yes, aloud, as he had done at every cross, or old statue, says he, I have been in it for several generations. we had passed by the road side. I don't see a VirUpon this I thought myself with the travelling Jew; gin Mary; why are you praying, master Claude ?'--and blessed heaven for bringing me acquainted with I'm saying a devotion, to pray poor Hannibai's soul a man, that I had so long wished to meet with. For out of purgatory, (says he) he was a great thief several generations, master Claude? I don't under- and murtheter, and may very probably be there still; stand you.' Why, Sir, says he, our family have but he paid my ancestors well, and so I am bound always been barber-surgeons; from father to son, to pray for him. You see that house there! it was without any interruption, for these twenty-eight gene-built by a Savoyard: he put his collar bone out, and rations; my son, who is a promising youth, and is I set it. Lord have mercy upon poor Hannibal! scarce fifty yet, is the twenty-ninth. I am but seventyfive; and I have had this plaguy gout these twelve years. Will you be so good as to let me replace my foot again; for that last jolt has quite put me out of order. And how old was your father, master Claude, when he died?' Ah, poor man, he died at - a hundred and three: but it was by a fall from his horse, in going to visit a patient. He was hurried out of the world: rest his soul !-At this rate, the first surgeon in your family, might have been surgeon to Noah, and the good people in the ark.'-This set all his wrinkles in motion. Oh no, (says he,) we are not of so great antiquity as that comes to: at least, our accounts don't reach up so far-Ilave you a history then of the twenty-seven surgeons, your predecessors ?'-Have I, says he! yes, that I have; and I would rather lose my legs, than lose it. But that does not go so far as I could wish: the furthest thing back, of a remarkable thing, that I find in it, is that the fifth surgeon of our family shaved Hannibal, the night he lay at Lamburg, in his passage over the Alps: I wish he had cut his throat! for he did a Will you have another pinch of snuff? This snuffbox was given me by the maréchal de Crequi- You have travelled then?-Ay, sir, nobody is regarded in our country, unless they have rolled over the world. I lived twenty years in France and Germany; I was barber-surgeon to the maréchal, and was with him when he received his death's wound. And is it true that the ball that kill'd him was directed, To the maréchal de Crequi ?—No, sir, says he, that I can assure you it was not; for it was these fingers took it out of his body.-Just as he said this, we came to our journey's end." A NEW WAY OF PAYING OLD DEBTS. "Pay me my money!" Robin cry'd, |