第36章 CHAPTER XI(1)

The apprehending, examination, and imprisonment of Jack for suspicion of poisoning.

* The four following chapters contain the history of passing the Bill against Occasional Conformity, and of the Whigs agreeing to it.

The attentive reader cannot have forgot that the story of Van Ptschirnsooker's powder was interrupted by a message from Frog. Ihave a natural compassion for curiosity, being much troubled with the distemper myself; therefore to gratify that uneasy itching sensation in my reader, I have procured the following account of that matter.

Van Ptschirnsooker came off (as rogues usually do upon such occasions) by peaching his partner; and being extremely forward to bring him to the gallows, Jack* was accused as the contriver of all the roguery. And, indeed, it happened unfortunately for the poor fellow, that he was known to bear a most inveterate spite against the old gentlewoman; and, consequently, that never any ill accident happened to her but he was suspected to be at the bottom of it. If she pricked her finger, Jack, to be sure, laid the pin in the way;if some noise in the street disturbed her rest, who could it be but Jack in some of his nocturnal rambles? If a servant ran away, Jack had debauched him. Every idle tittle-tattle that went about, Jack was always suspected for the author of it. However, all was nothing to this last affair of the temperating, moderating powder.

* All the misfortunes of the Church charged upon the Puritan party.

The hue and cry went after Jack to apprehend him dead or alive, wherever he could be found. The constables looked out for him in all his usual haunts; but to no purpose. Where d'ye think they found him at last? Even smoking his pipe, very quietly, at his brother Martin's; from whence he was carried with a vast mob at his heels, before the worshipful Mr. Justice Overdo. Several of his neighbours made oath,* that of late, the prisoner had been observed to lead a very dissolute life, renouncing even his usual hypocrisy and pretences to sobriety; that he frequented taverns and eating-houses, and had been often guilty of drunkenness and gluttony at my Lord Mayor's table; that he had been seen in the company of lewd women; that he had transferred his usual care of the engrossed copy of his father's will to bank bills, orders for tallies, and debentures:** these he now affirmed, with more literal truth, to be meat, drink, and cloth, the philosopher's stone, and the universal medicine;*** that he was so far from showing his customary reverence to the will, that he kept company with those that called his father a cheating rogue, and his will a forgery; that he not only sat quietly and heard his father railed at, but often chimed in with the discourse, and hugged the authors as his bosom friends;**** that instead of asking for blows at the corners of the streets, he now bestowed them as plentifully as he begged them before.*** In short, that he was grown a mere rake; and had nothing left in him of old Jack except his spite to John Bull's mother.

* The manners of the Dissenters changed from their former strictness.

** Dealing much in stock-jobbing.

*** "Tale of a Tub."

**** Herding with deists and atheists.

Another witness made oath, that Jack had been overheard bragging of a trick* he had found out to manage the "old formal jade," as he used to call her. "Hang this numb-skull of mine," quoth he, "that Icould not light on it sooner. As long as I go in this ragged tattered coat, I am so well known, that I am hunted away from the old woman's door by every barking cur about the house; they bid me defiance. There's no doing mischief as an open enemy; I must find some way or other of getting within doors, and then I shall have better opportunities of playing my pranks, besides the benefit of good keeping."* Getting into places and Church preferments by occasional conformity.