CHAP.I.
HowJohnquarrelled withLewis Baboonabout dividing the West-common; and how instead of going to law, they came to blows.
We account it a great oversight in the learned Sir Humphrey Polisworth, that he has taken little or no notice of John Bull’s land-estate, his orchards, kitchen-grounds, and corn-fields, of which he has always possessed an excellent share; but considered him as a simple clothier and mechanic, merely because he sent goods of this,and many other kinds to market. John got ready money, it is true, by the sale of his goods; but the great support of his family, and what made him be treated like a gentleman in the neighbourhood, was the excellent manor of Bull-hall, where John and his posterity may find capon and bacon, and beef and mutton, without being obliged to any body, and without cringing to Lord Strutt, Squire South, or Lewis Baboon, for their custom. It is true, that the devil possessed John sometimes to that degree, that you could not hear a word from him but about his cloth, and his iron-work, and his pottery, and you would see him up to the eyes in clay, or steeped, till he grew all the colours of the rainbow, in dyer’s stuff, orsmoaked and roasted like a smith, or sallow and greasy like a weaver, and no gentleman could keep company with him, or any of his family, such low habits they had got behind the counter, or in the work-shop. “Mind your customers, lads,” says John; “Good words go far; Be civil to every body whether they buy or no;” and then he would rap out a string of proverbs, such as, “A penny saved is a penny got; Fast bind, fast find,” and so forth; in short, if it had not been for some good blood which John had still in his veins, he must have grown a mere pedling, sneaking, designing, mercenary rogue, as ever was.
There was, as we say, blood, or something else, that kept up John’s spirit, so that he went abroad now andthen, in as gentleman-like a way as could be wished, although Lewis Baboon used to sit sneering at him sometimes as he passed; but John minded him not a rush.
Now it happened, that John and Lewis had about the same time taken in part of the west-common, and though their fields were not contiguous, they could not agree about their marches. Many meetings they had to settle them, but all to no purpose, for none of them knew well what he would be at. The common saying was, that Lewis wanted to get all the land in the country, and you needed only to tell John so much, in order to put him in a downright foam of rage and fury. However this be,Lewis tormented his own people enough, with making them stick in posts and stakes in different parts of the common; and when John asked him what he meant, he said, They were only rubing posts for his cows to scratch themselves, in case they strayed so far. But other people told John, that Lewis would some day or other claim every bit of that ground as his own, by virtue of those stakes, if he was not checked in time. Accordingly, John sent him some angry message about them, and Lewis in return, begged leave to present his compliments to John, and allured him, that the thing in the world he wished most, was to live in good terms with his honoured friend and neighbour John Bull. Mean time, some of John’s cow-herdsmet with a fellow or two belonging to Lewis, and after a great deal of bad language, painful to repeat, they came to blows, and made a great noise, which brought John and Lewis too, to see what was the matter. John, indeed, happened to be in his barge that afternoon, on the lake to the west of his house, which he affected to call his own fish-pond, and Lewis too being on his way to the common, their barges unhappily met, when John, without any more ado, took up an oar, and aimed a blow at Lewis Baboon’s brains, You damn’d, insidious, fair-tongued villain, this is all your doing, with your stakes and your posts, and your covetousness for land, which nobody will possess under you, you damned, oppressive,squeezing rascal. My dear John, says Lewis, what is the matter? The matter, you scoundrel! With that John aimed another blow; but their barges ran foul of one another, and he fastened on Lewis Baboon’s wig, tore his bag, and threw it in the water; in short, before you could count six, there was not a hat nor a wig to be seen in the whole boats-crew, of either side. History says, that Lewis had like to have been drowned outright, and was glad to get home with his head broken in many places, and cursing John Bull, for the most rash, cholerick, blunder-headed fellow, that ever was known in the world.