A man and a pig
Inthe next apartment into which Mr.Wisemanconducted us, we saw the cub of a bear, who lay upon the floor to which he was chained, without having the good manners to rise when we entered; but when the Bramin applied his wand to young Bruin's buttocks, he heaved up his shaggy hide with a kind of lazy resentment, and saluted us with a reluctant grin and a savage growl, which plainly intimated that he did not think himself much beholden to us for our company. "This young brute, said our conductor, is animated by the soul of the late matterRustick, of clownish memory. His father was a gentleman of rank and fortune, and greatly beloved and respected by all his acquaintance; and if his son Richard had possessed the same virtues and accomplishments, he might afterwards have enjoyed his title and estate with equal comfort and reputation. But as merit does not go by inheritance, like house and land, youngRustick'scharacter was entirely the reverse of his father's. He was of an awkward clumsy make; and the heaviness of his disposition, and the coarseness of his manners perfectly corresponded with the shape of his body. Though he was sent to school very early, and put under the care of the best instructors which the country afforded, he was a considerable time before he could tell his letters, and much longer before he could read with tolerable accuracy: and even then he pronounced every thing with such a clownish accent and such a drawling tone, that any stranger would have taken him for a young country bumkin, who had been used to follow the plow tail, and not for the son and heir of a wealthy gentleman. He was equally eminent for his neatness and dexterity in the art of penmanship; for, even when he was twelve years old, if you had seen the letter which he then sent to his mamma without the knowledge of his master, it was wrote so crooked (i.e. not from side to side as it ought to have been, but from corner to corner) and the strokes were all so coarse and uneven, and the whole of the letter so awkwardly spelt, and so unmercifully blotted and bedawbed, that you would have thought it had been the elegant epistle ofTony Clodhopperto his grandmotherGoody Linsey Woolsey. As for his mamma, poor gentlewoman! when she first opened it, she thought it had been sent to her by some impudent shoe black or chimney sweeper; but when she had directed her eyes to the bottom and read (though not, I assure you, without the greatest difficulty)—"from yr, loven ind respactfle sun, Rickard Rostick" she was so much oppressed with shame and vexation, that she tore the letter into a thousand pieces, and was ready to burst into tears. He was alike remarkable for the politeness of his manners, and his agreeable address; for he had such a treacherous memory, though he had been frequently reminded of the propriety and indeed the necessity of observing those little punctilios of good behaviour, that he seldom remembered when any company entered the room in which he happened to be sitting, either to rise from his chair or take off his hat; and when he was told of it either by his parents or his master, he would bounce up, and snatch of his hat in such an awkward hurry, grinning and leering the whole time, that you would have thought he had just started from a dream; and even then he would generally forget to finish the rude ceremony by making one of his ducking bows. It is true, indeed, he had been under the hands of a dancing master; but notwithstanding the utmost care and assiduity of his teacher, who was esteemed a very excellent one; he was never able to perform a whit better than he does in his present shape. In short, you might as well have kept a hog in training for Newmarket races, or an ox for his majesty to ride upon at a grand review, as have attempted to initiate masterDicky Rustickin the elements of politeness and good breeding. With such a delicate disposition, and such amiable talents, you will readily perceive that he must have been a most agreeable play fellow. His favorite diversion was that which has been distinguished byA man, down on one knee, begging a standing manthe vulgar, by the well known name ofPully Hawly, in which he so much excelled that whenever he was invited by the young gentlemen and ladies in the neighbourhood to play with them, he generally rewarded their civility by tearing their coats or pulling their clothes off their backs before he returned home; so that at last they bestowed upon him, by general consent, the honourable title of'Squire Bruin. It must, however, be acknowledged that he was a youth of such impartial justice, that he shewed as little favour to his own clothes as to those ofotherpeople; for what with climbing up old trees, and rambling over hedges and ditches, to seek for birds nests, he commonly appeared by dinner time, how well soever he had been dressed in the morning, in as ragged a coat as he wears at present. It must also be remarked, that if the young gentlemen and ladies soon grew weary, as indeed they did, of such a rough play fellow, he, inhisturn, was as willing to leavetheircompany, as they were to be rid ofhis; for his chief delight was to associate with such vulgar boys and girls as were of the same rugged disposition as himself. With these he could pull and hawl and romp and tear as long as he pleased; and the more active he became in this raggamuffin species of diversion, the more they relished his company. But, upon occasion, he could fight as well as play: I mean when he either was provoked to it by his equals, or tempted to it by the hopes of defrauding of their little property those who he knew had neither strength enough nor courage to resist him. But whatever was his motive either forbeginningor suffering himself to bedrawninto an engagement, he was very far from confining himself to any rules of honour, or to the established laws of war; for instead of boxing fairly, he would kick, pull hair, bite, and scratch most unmercifully, and never fail to take every advantage of his antagonist after he had brought him to the ground. For these reasons he was soon dignified with the nick name ofDick Bear, even by the vulgar boys in the streets; and most of them afterwards took care never to engage with him unless whenA pile of people under a treethere were several other boys present to see fair play. One would think that such a rough hewn and slovenly mortal as we have been describing would have had little regard for any delicacies in the eating way. But whoever draws such a conclusion in favour of our hero,Dicky Rustick, is greatly mistaken; for I can assure you that he had as nice and dainty a tooth as any lady in the land. Though his father always kept a handsome table, it afforded scarcely any thing which was good enough for the palate of MasterRichard. Nothing would go down with him but tarts, custards, and the most costly cakes and puddings; for as to good roast and boiled meat and plain and wholesome pies or dumplings, he would turn up his nose at them as if they were fit only for vagabonds and beggars. Nay, even to this very hour, and in his present clumsy shape, he is almost as dainty as ever; for he is remarkablyA man standing in front of a bee hivefond of honey, and if permitted would often expose his shaggy head and his eyes to the resentment of the bees, by disturbing their hives to rob them of their delicious store. It was his fondness for niceties of every kind which shortened his days, and eased his parents of their apprehensions for a son who, if he had lived, would have been a continual plague and disgrace to them; for on the day when he entered into the fourteenth year of his age, being indulged rather more than common, he devoured such a quantity of the richest tarts, that his stomach could not digest them; so that he soon fell into a violent fever, which in a few days hurried his unworthy soul out of the body of a young country 'squire (for such he would have been) into the carcass of this hairy and awkward young monster which now stands before you. He so well understands what I have been saying, and is so much vexed at the character I have given of him, which he knows to be a very just one, that if you will promise to quit the room and leave him to himself he will pleasure you with one of his best dances before you go."—Accordingly after thanking the Bramin for the account he had given us, we all promised to leave Mr.Bruinto his own meditation; upon which, after taking two or three sulkey rounds, the young savage reared himself upon his buttocks, and shuffled a saraband which lasted a few minutes. When he had finished his dance he swaggered down again upon his fore paws, and by a sullen growl seemed to claim the performance of our promise, an indulgence which we very readily granted him.
CHAP. VIII.
Of the astonishing Transmigration of MissAbigail Eviltongueinto the Body of a Serpent.
A woman looking at a snake on the ground
Inthe next apartment we saw a large wire cage, in which the Bramin told us he had a bird which was something different from the common ones; and so indeed it was, for upon my eldest daughter's going near to see it, she was startled by a large serpent which darted itself against the wires, and hissed and sissed as if it would have stung us all to death in an instant. It was however, a very beautiful creature of the kind, and as the sun then shone very bright, the golden and silver streaks upon its azure skin made a very splendid appearance. My youngest son wanting to go and stroke it;—"No, my pretty boy, said the good Bramin; if you have any value for yourself, you will always keep out of the reach of such creatures as these, and of all such who resemble the young lady by whose soul this serpent is animated. I sayyoung lady, because the serpent before you is indeed animated by the soul of the late MissAbigail Eviltongue. The family of theEviltongue, (I dare say you have heard of them) is extremely numerous; for there are some, and indeed too many of them, in every town, and, I believe in every village in the country. MissAbigail, the young lady I am speaking of, had as just a title to the name, and supported the character of her family with as much exactness as any one amongst them; for her tongue was remarkably active, and spared the reputation neither of friend nor foe. She was, it is true, a very handsome girl, and the charms of her person would have procured her many admirers if they had not been disgraced by her natural propensity to slander and defamation. In her very infancy, as soon as she could speak to be understood, she began with telling fibs of the servants, and very frequently of her brothers and sisters; for which, you may be certain, they all despised her very heartily. But as she was too much encouraged in this hateful practice by her parents, instead of being severely flogged for it, as she ought to have been, she set the frowns and sneers of the others at open defiance; and the more they resented her little malice the more eager she was to gratify it by loading them with all the falsehoods she was capable of inventing. In proportion as she grew older, this mischievous habit increased upon her; and when she was big enough to go a visiting, she indulged it abroad with as much freedom as she had been used to do at home; so that, in a short time, there was scarcely a young miss or master in the neighbourhood whose character she had not attempted to injure. What made her slanders the more odious was, that she generally vented them under a pretence of the greatest friendship and respect for the persons to whom she related them, and with great seeming pity for those whose reputation they were intended to destroy. She had likewise the malicious cunning to say many trifling things in praise of the objects of her censure; that by thus assuming an appearance of the strictest impartiality, and of the sincerest good nature, she might more easily gain credit to the bad things she said afterwards. By such artifices as these she frequently succeeded with the innocent and the unwary, and set one acquaintance and even one friend against another, without any sort of advantage to herself but the mere pleasure of making mischief. Another trick which she often employed for that purpose, was to examine into a young gentleman or lady's constitutional foibles (for we all have some) and when she had discovered these, to go immediately to the person and tell him or her, that master or misssuch a onehad publickly ridiculed him for those very failings; by these means she was almost certain to be believed without any farther inquiry; for every one, even upon the slightest hint, will readily suspect that those things have been said of him, which he most wishes to be concealed, because he is conscious they arereallytrue; he will seldom trouble himself to inquire into the veracity of the tale bearer, lest he should be reduced to the necessity of defending himself on his weakest side. For a similar reason, when MissAbigailhad a mind to flatter any person (which she frequentlyA man standing, facing a seated womanwould, to answer the purposes of her malice) she always commended him for those particular good qualities, or accomplishments which she knew he most valued himself for, or chiefly wished to have the credit of; because she was sensible that by this method she effectually retained his own vanity as her advocate for whatever she said afterwards. Nay, I have been informed by one who knew her perfectly well, that, young as she was, she sometimes carried her artifice so far as to begin a dispute with the person she intended to deceive, and after a little sharp altercationpro and conto flatter his vanity by gradually giving up the argument, and at last yielding him a victory, which gave him the more pleasure, because he thought it to be entirely owing to the invincible strength of his judgment. But she had another fault, which, if possible, was still more odious, than any of those already mentioned—viz. to revile and backbite those from whom she had received the greatest favours; for as she was too proud to own herself to be under obligations to any person, so to prevent others from taking notice of them, as she imagined to her disadvantage, she would represent every obligation she had received from her friends toTwo standing women facing each otherbe either of the most trifling consequence, or to have been bestowed from selfish and despicable motives. Such was the temper and behaviour of MissAbigail, who was a wretched complication of malice, low cunning and ingratitude: It is therefore no wonder that every person of sense and character was careful to avoid her company, and that she was detested by many, and despised even by those who wished her well. In short, the general contempt to which she had exposed herself, and the severe mortifications she met with from time to time, gave such killing wounds to her pride, that after pining and wasting away with shame and vexation for the space of several months, she at last broke her heart and gave up the ghost, in the seventeenth year of her age. After her death her contemptible soul was immediately hurried into the body of this venomous serpent, where it still retains its former malice and cunning."—When the Bramin had finished his story,A woman standing by a canopy bed and a woman in the bedthe serpent, as if she understood and resented what had been said, writhed about and hissed at him as if she could have stung his eyes out.
We afterwards visited several other apartments, and saw a young tyger, a fox, a badger, &c. each of which was animated by the soul of some naughty child, who very nearly resembled him in temper. But as I have perhaps, already carried my treatise to such a length as will tire the eyes and the patience of my little readers, it is proper to bring it to a conclusion. I will, therefore, take my leave of them for the present, with observing that in one of the rooms we visited, we saw a pretty little parrot, in a gilt cage, who was perpetually talking, but did not understand the meaning of one single word he said. "This noisy bird, said the good Bramin, is inhabited by the soul of the late masterGabble, who was remarkable for two faults. He always spoke without thinking, and read a great deal with so little attention, that he made no farther improvement in knowledge than if he had never read at all. He devoured every thing, but digested nothing." If any of my readers happen to be of the same disposition, they may survey the gilt covers of this little treatise with as much advantage as they will peruse the contents of it.