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twenty vifits in one day, where no physician prescribed, and he did not vary the three hundredth part of afyllable.

I only mention these particulars, that my reader may form an idea, how well this confufion of Babel could agree with a man of fo few words as the doctor made use of, in a whole day's work; no wonder, therefore, that he took himself away, and I was obliged to follow, I mean precede him; for, being in his waistcoat pocket, had I followed, you all can plainly fee, without my telling, he must have walked away a

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CHAP.

CHA P. XXII.

Contains nothing extraordinary.

THE

HE doctor, in his road home from this notable meeting, recollected he had a patient that had been ill about a fortnight before ; therefore, he might as well call with an, How do you, to take the chance of a relapse.-Relapses are a great articles in an apothecary's books.-He found his quondam patient very well, which, he faid, he was mighy glad to fee: I believed him; though I don't think his patient did (who proved to be the gentleman with the long nofe and fmall eyes, that I had feen before at a coffee-house.) He gave the doctor

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fuch a fly fignificant look, on his faying, he was glad to find him well, that I could not help thinking, he doubted his fincerity; but, be that as it may, he infifted on the doctor's staying to fmoke one pipe with him: Bolus (who had nothing to do before he went to bed, but to fee if his bottles of chalk-water and lemonjuice mixt, were all booked with the proper hard names to them,) confented to stay an hour;-I had like to have faid, chat an hour, but that, I believe, he never did in his life; take from him his ftring of queftions to his patients, and his conversation confifted (like the primitive Chriftians) in, Yea, yea, and, Nay, nay; but he handled a pipe well, and fucked in the fmoke, and puffed it out again, with as confequential a face

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as any chairman at a quarter feffions could put on for the life of him. Mr. Small-eyes took great pains to draw the doctor into a conversation, but he always answered, "There are excep"tions to all general rules." "You "are right, doctor," fays Small-eyes, " and a particular inftance of it is just "now come into my head, viz. the ge"neral opinion of fat animals being

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fuperior to lean: whoever was hardy "enough to deny, that a fat goofe "doth not much exceed a lean one?" "Nobody," fays the doctor, biting two inches from the end of his pipe, for hafte to get his words out-“ or a "fat pig's, or a fat calf's head ?”

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Nobody, nobody," fays the doctor; "And yet," adds Small-eyes," with "what contempt do all mankind look "on a fat-headed fellow."

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Whether this fide-wipe graz'd too near the doctor's left cheek, or what was the matter, I can't fay, but, from that instant, he did not speak another word, but kept fucking, puffing, and fpitting all the time he ftaid, with as much vehemence, as if he was qualifying himself to be fellow of a college,

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Small-eyes feemed to take no manner of notice of it, but went on: "I "was one day," adds he, "mentioning this thing to my old friend "Triftram Shandy, into whose brain as many unaccountable things pop'd, as ever did into the fcull of "any man living: we had, a little " before that, been difcuffing the po"litical management of the rulers of "the land, and wishing they would "ferve a regular apprenticeship to

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