IN the same village where my father and my mother dwelt,
dwelt also a thin, upright, motherly, notable, good old body
of a midwife, who, with the help of a little plain good sense,
and some years' full employment in her business, in which
she had all along trusted little to her own efforts, and a great
deal to those of dame nature,-had acquired, in her way,
no small degree of reputation in the world;-by which
word world, need I in this place inform your worship, that I
would be understood to mean no more of it, than a small
circle described upon the circle of the great world, of four
English miles diameter, or thereabouts, of which the cottage
where the good old woman lived, is supposed to be the
centre.-She had been left, it seems, a widow in great dis-
tress, with three or four small children, in her forty-seventh
year; and as she was at that time a person of decent car-
riage,-grave deportment,-a woman moreover of few words,
and withal an object of compassion, whose distress and
silence under it, called out the louder for a friendly lift: the
wife of the parson of the parish was touched with pity; and
having often lamented an inconvenience, to which her hus-
band's flock had for many years been exposed, inasmuch, as
there was no such thing as a midwife, of any kind or degree
to be got at, let the case have been never so urgent, within
less than six or seven long miles riding; which said seven
long miles in dark nights and dismal roads, the country
thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, was almost equal
to fourteen; and that in effect was sometimes next to having
no midwife at all; it came into her head, that it would be
doing as seasonable a kindness to the whole parish, as to the
poor creature herself, to get her a little instructed in some
of the plain principles of the business, in order to set her
up in it. As no woman thereabouts was better qualified to
execute the plan she had formed than herself, the gentle-
woman very charitably undertook it; and having great in-
fluence over the female part of the parish, she found no
difficulty in effecting it to the utmost of her wishes. In truth,
the parson joined his interest with his wife's in the whole
affair, and in order to do things as they should be, and give
the poor soul as good a title by law to practice, as his wife
had given by institution,-he cheerfully paid the fees for
the ordinary's licence himself, amounting, in the whole, to
the sum of eighteen shillings and fourpence; so that, betwixt
them both, the good woman was fully invested in the real
and corporal possession of her office, together with all its
rights, members, and appurtenances whatsoever.
These last words, you must know, were not according to
the old form in which such licences, faculties, and powers
usually ran, which in like cases had heretofore been granted
to the sisterhood. But it was according to a neat Formula of
Didius his own devising, who having a particular turn for
taking to pieces, and new framing over again, all kind of
instruments in that way, not only hit upon this dainty
amendment, but coaxed many of the old licensed matrons
in the neighbourhood, to open their faculties afresh, in
order to have this whim-wham of his inserted.
I own I never could envy Didius in these kinds of
fancies of his:-But every man to his own taste.-Did not
Dr Kunastrokius, that great man, at his leisure hours, take
the greatest delight imaginable in combing of asses' tails,
and plucking the dead hairs out with his teeth, though he
had tweezers always in his pocket? Nay, if you come to that,
Sir, have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting
Solomon himself.-have they not had their HOBBY HORSES-
;-their running horses,-their coins and their
cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles,
their pallets,-their maggots and their butterflies?-and so
long as a man rides his HOBBY-HORSE peaceably and
quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you
or me to get up behind him,-pray, Sir, what have either
you or I to do with it?