162 A Dog-Day. [ Ave. 
the weekly beer-bill makes the acceptor look as grave at its,amount,as 
if it was his own funeral expenses; and now maiden ladies, living on 
small annuities, swallow twice the accustomed. guantwm of Souchong at 
a sitting. Now fashionables wish in vain that it was not fashionable tobe 
seen in Rotten-Row when the sun looks perpendicularly down from the 
heavens; and the haut ton, who meet at midnight in full assemblies, may 
rather be called the Aot ton; and now it is as difficult to get.a seat/in 
the Park as in the Parliament ; and those who do, seem as if they had 
ebtained it after many days’ contest, and look as if they expected to, be 
chaired as the sitting members for St. James’s Mall. Now fat persons 
of both sexes wish they had not indulged so much in the “ good things 
of this.life” in the winter months, for which they pay a horrid interest 
during the summer ditto; and much they envy the lean and compara- 
tively cool creatures who move about them without being drowned in 
their own unction, like a goose basted in his own fat; and now elderly 
gentlemen who wear powder, and wo’n’t wear chip hats, are all over 
admirations (1; 1 !), periods (.*.+.), and commas (,’,’,) on coat- 
collars and black waistcoats, from ‘“ the minute drops” of their profuse, 
powdered perspiration. Now a short-sighted person of much conse- 
quence, who pats an iron post on the top, and cries, “ stand out of the 
way, boy!” feels as if he had committed a mistake, and blistered his 
fingers ; and now it is really an East-Indian sort of indulgence to meet an 
old friend who looks coolly on one, and begins not to remember whether 
one’s name is Smith or Simpson; and we cannot resent the cut, the cool- 
ness of the cutter’s assurance is so agreeable—but, on the contrary, feel 
grateful. Now bakers look up from their Tartarian territories, and deem 
the arching heaven over this earth to be a larger sort of oven, in which 
men are baked instead of meats; and now bakers’ men become, if any 
thing, rather more crusty than their crustiest loaves. Now fishmongers 
are observed to be particularly anxious, about dusk, to throw a light upon 
their fish, lest too much darkness should afford an opportunity to their 
mackerel and other ‘ small deer” to throw a light upon themselves: for 
it is a villanous piece of candour in your stale fish, that they will not 
keep their own secret; and now fishmongers need not boil the blue out 
of lobsters, for if your lobster have any reminiscences of his former 
cool enjoyments whilst a tenant in the deep, he will stew himself into 
the becoming red. Now farmers would not mind subscribing for a 
shower of rain if it were purchasable ; and pathways across fields are 
chapped and gaping; and cows ruminate in dry ponds, and wish them- 
selves camels (for they can carry a pail of water with them), and look 
with horror at dry fodder, and wishfully at their own milk in the dairy- 
pails; and farm-yard dogs cannot bark from drouth ; and ducks waddle 
far and near to discover a ditch not quite dry, with duck-weed over- 
grown, but cannot find such a duck’s paradise either near or far, and 
return home in melancholy procession, ruminating in silence on the 
s halcyon days” of hard showers and overflowing brooks, dykes, rivers, 
and rivulets. 
«« Now the mower whets his scythe,” and wishes he could wet himself 
at the same time. Now several Miss Smiths tumble quite promiscuously 
over little hillocks of hay, where it is making; and several Mr. Simpsons; 
not noticing where they fell, fall over them; and the elder Miss Smith 
seems quite shocked, and cries “for shame, Serina, Celestina, and Sera 
phina! how can you be so vulgar?” but is cut off in the middle of her re- 
