MISADVENTURES or A LOVER. 29 



afterwards learned that, in the plenitude of his anxiety to give the 

 nobleman the benefit of his professional skill, one of the doctors rode 

 his horse so fast lhat the poor animal died in a few days afterwards. 

 Judge of my surprise, judge of how queerly I felt, in more senses 

 than one, when the two sons (my townsmen) of Esculapius entered 

 the room. In a state of all but utter petrifaction, I lay on my bed 

 before them. Conceive, reader, if you are fit for the task; conceive 

 their astonishment and mortification when, on being ushered, with 

 all the pomp and show of circumstance, into iny apartment, they be- 

 held, instead of Lord A , me stretched before them ! They first 



looked at me, and then at each other, for some time, alternately, as 

 if they did not know whether they ought not to doubt the evidence 

 of their own eyes. So stupid an expression of countenance as that 

 then exhibited by these disciples of Galen, was never before witnessed 

 under the sun. Their mutual impression, on a little reflection, was 

 that a gross and grievous hoax had been played off at their expense 

 (alas! the expense fell on me!), and therefore they determined, be- 

 fore prescribing any thing for me, or even making the slightest in- 

 quiry into the extent or nature of the injury I had received, to de- 

 mand an explanation of mine host. They luckily expressed this 

 intention audibly. Concluding that this step would only make 

 bad worse, I explained the circumstances, so far, to them ; taking 

 special care to lay the best share of the blame on my servant in the 

 article of upsetting the gig, and also accusing him of having invented 

 and applied to me the title of Lord A . 



When the circumstances of this adventure became known in E , 



they proved, as will readily be believed, the occasion of infinite mer- 

 riment to my fellow-townsmen. My only consolation was a small 

 one certainly that 7 was not the only person laughed at. Mine 

 host, and the two physicians, ail in short whom I had hoaxed in the 

 business, came in severally for their share of public laughter. 



I need not say there was nothing in the affair laughable to me. In 

 so far as I was concerned, it was in many senses a serious matter. 

 " It was long and many a day" before I recovered from the effects 

 of the upsetting of the gig ; but in addition to my calamities in this 

 respect, and the mortification consequent on the awkward issue of my 

 schemes touching the abduction of the baronet's daughter, there 

 came sundry heavy bills against me ; the first from the gig and 

 horse hirer; the second from Boniface; but the last and heaviest of 

 all were those which came under the title of " fees" from the brace 

 of Esculapians, particularly the one from the " practitioner" who 

 murdered the horse by his furious riding. To all these "disagree- 

 ables" enough in all conscience there were superadded severe 

 daily and hourly lectures on my folly, read to me by my relatives. 

 My situation, in one word, was insufferable : the mortal did not, nor 

 does exist, who could have borne it. I left the town of E ab- 

 ruptly one moon-light evening. In ten days thereafter I was in the 

 town of Carlisle. 



