220 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES and despise not the wisdom of these few hairs that are grown grey in care of thee. Edg. Nightingale, stay a little. Indeed, I'll hear some of this ! " Enter now Dame Overdo his wife, with Grace Wellborn his ward, young Cokes his brother-in-law, who has this day taken out his license to marry Grace, and Coke's masterful man Waspe ; our blind justice proceeds with his moral exhortation : — " Over. Thirst not after that frothy liquor, ale ; for who knows when he openeth the stopple, what may be in the bottle ? Hath not a snail, a spider, yea, a newt been found there ? [Manifest plagiarism from his excellency Dan Jordan Knockem !] thirst not after it, youth ; thirst not after it. Cokes. This is a brave fellow, Numps [Waspe], let's hear him. . . . Over. Neither do thou lust after that tawney weed tobacco. Cokes. Brave words I Over. Whose complexion is like the Indian's that vents it. Cokes. Are they not brave words, sister ? Over. And who can tell, if before the gathering and making up thereof, the Alligarta hath not pissed thereon ? — The creeping venom of which subtle serpent, as some late writers affirm, neither the cutting of the perilous plant, nor the drying of it, nor the lighting or burning, can anyway persway [mitigate] or assuage. Cokes. Good, i' faith I is it not, sister ? Over. Hence it is that the lungs of the tobacconist [smoker] are rotted, the liver spotted, the brain smoked like the backside of the pig-woman's booth here, and the whole body within, black as her pan you saw e'en now without. Cokes. A fine similitude that, sir ! did you see the pan ? Edg. Yes, sir. Over, Nay, the hole in the nose here of some tobacco-takers, or the third nostril, if I may so call it, which makes that they can vent the tobacco out, like the ace of clubs, or rather the flower-de-lis, is caused from the tobacco, the mere tobacco ! Cokes. Who would have missed this, sister ?
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