trymen are at prefent freezing to death, yet am I ftewing like a racehorse-rider between two feather-beds; and, as for air, I might as well be in the black-hole at Calcutta. For the little chance I have of any particles being able to penetrate through mynheer's five pair of breeches, to reach the fixth, is prevented by his wearing his hand in the outward pocket, exactly over me; fo that a rat in an air-pump, has an elegant life to mine. I wish the bullockmouth'd Jew, that paid nfe to this Mynheer Donder und Blaxem, was to ftand up to the neck in the river Jordan till I fetch him out; but lo! a dawn of hope appears; five pair of the Dutchman's breeches are opened, to give his hand leave to draw me out.-What's the matter? by all that's K 4

wicked!

wicked! a bartering bargain going forward, betwixt a Yorkshireman, and a Dutchman. The clothier has made out a bill of parcels for forty pounds, and the Dutchman is tempting him with me, to give a receipt in full. Why, you unconscionable fon of a butter-box, are you not ashamed to beat a poor clothier down half in half? Sacramentum," fays the Dutchman. cr "Upon my falvation," fays the clothier; now it is plain, that one minded his facramentum as little as the other did his falvation; for they kept kicking the two words about like two foot-balls; this is pull baker pull devil! thinks I, with a witnefs; however, facramentum died harder than falvation, and I was juft returning into the Dutchman's ftew-pan again, when Yorkshire gave it up: he wrote a receipt in full, and took me; and the Dutch

man

man got a porter, and marched off, with the goods and the fatisfaction of having bit Yorkshire out of twenty pounds: but mynheer had not been far North enough for a Yorkshireman; for I quickly understood, that Nicholas Nopewell, the clothier, had only given feven pound ten for this parcel of worm-eaten cloth, and laid out about thirty fhillings more in fine-drawing the holes for the first half dozen yards in each piece; so that although mynheer hugged himself, with the imagination of biting the Yorkshireman out of twenty pounds, the Yorkshireman was very fure he had bit the Dutchman out of eleven pounds at least; and at fo cheap a rate as only pawning his falvation, which he could not have done at any pawn-broker's in town for eleven pence.

2

СНАР.

CHAP. XVII.

Nothing got by impertinent interruptions.

ISS Jefferson was the daughter of Of who? fays a voice behind me; and pray where does the come from? we never heard a word of her in either your first, fecond, or third volumes; and yet you begin to speak of her as if he was an old aquaintance? What's that to you, who the is, fays I cooly: can't I begin a story in the middle, proceed to the end of it, and end it with the beginning, as feveral great writers have done; but I must be interrupted by you? Upon this I turned about; when, finding it was his mock-divini

tyship,

tyfhip, the prefbyterian parfon, that I thought my Scotch rats had fent off with a rattle. I could not help being a little nettled; two interruptions from one quarter was too much to bear with Chriftian patience. You gauger, fays I, of your hearers porridge-pots; you measurer of the fquare inches in their rumps of beef, and folid inches in their fuet puddings; you carver of the thirtieth of January calf's head, I thought my rats had fent your hypocritical face far enough off, and that by this time you was regaling with fome good thecreature of your pious flock, and making her turn up the white of her eyes; but, fince your affurance will ftay, Mifs Jefferson fhan't make her appearance either this chapter or the next; and, if you are not gone by

7

that