The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 3,418 pages of information about The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3.

The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 3,418 pages of information about The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3.

The Doctor is lately come from his Travels, and has practised both by Sea and Land, and therefore Cures the Green Sickness, long Sea Voyages, Campains, and Lying-Inn.  Both by Sea and Land!—­I will not answer for the Distempers called Sea Voyages and Campains; But I dare say, those of Green Sickness and Lying-Inn might be as well taken Care of if the Doctor staid a-shoar.  But the Art of managing Mankind, is only to make them stare a little, to keep up their Astonishment, to let nothing be familiar to them, but ever to have something in your Sleeve, in which they must think you are deeper than they are.  There is an ingenious Fellow, a Barber, of my Acquaintance, who, besides his broken Fiddle and a dryed Sea-Monster, has a Twine-Cord, strained with two Nails at each End, over his Window, and the Words Rainy, Dry, Wet, and so forth, written, to denote the Weather according to the Rising or Falling of the Cord.  We very great Scholars are not apt to wonder at this:  But I observed a very honest Fellow, a chance Customer, who sate in the Chair before me to be shaved, fix his Eye upon this Miraculous Performance during the Operation upon his Chin and Face.  When those and his Head also were cleared of all Incumbrances and Excrescences, he looked at the Fish, then at the Fiddle, still grubling in his Pockets, and casting his Eye again at the Twine, and the Words writ on each Side; then altered his mind as to Farthings, and gave my Friend a Silver Six-pence.  The Business, as I said, is to keep up the Amazement; and if my Friend had had only the Skeleton and Kitt, he must have been contented with a less Payment.  But the Doctor we were talking of, adds to his long Voyages the Testimony of some People that has been thirty Years lame. When I received my Paper, a sagacious Fellow took one at the same time, and read till he came to the Thirty Years Confinement of his Friends, and went off very well convinced of the Doctor’s Sufficiency.  You have many of these prodigious Persons, who have had some extraordinary Accident at their Birth, or a great Disaster in some Part of their Lives.  Any thing, however foreign from the Business the People want of you, will convince them of your Ability in that you profess.  There is a Doctor in Mouse-Alley near Wapping, who sets up for curing Cataracts upon the Credit of having, as his Bill sets forth, lost an Eye in the Emperor’s Service.  His Patients come in upon this, and he shews the Muster-Roll, which confirms that he was in his Imperial Majesty’s Troops; and he puts out their Eyes with great Success.  Who would believe that a Man should be a Doctor for the Cure of bursten Children, by declaring that his Father and Grandfather were [born [3]] bursten?  But Charles Ingoltson, next Door to the Harp in Barbican, has made a pretty Penny by that Asseveration.  The Generality go upon their first Conception, and think no further; all the rest is granted. 

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The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.