raise a blush, they have not room enough in their cheeks to show it. To be sure, bashfulness is a very pretty thing; but, in my mind, there is nothing on earth so impudent as an everlasting blush.

Rosy. My taste, my taste!—Well, Lauretta is none of these. Ah! I never see her but she puts me in mind of my poor dear wife.

O’Con. Ay, faith; in my opinion she can’t do a worse thing. Now he is going to bother me about an old hag that has been dead these six years.

[Aside.

Rosy. Oh, poor Dolly! I never shall see her like again; such an arm for a bandage—veins that seemed to invite the lancet. Then her skin, smooth and white as a gallipot; her mouth as large and not larger than the mouth of a penny phial; her lips conserve of roses; and then her teeth—none of your sturdy fixtures—ache as they would, it was but a small pull, and out they came. I believe I have drawn half a score of her poor dear pearls—[weeps]—But what avails her beauty? Death has no consideration—one must die as well as another.

O’Con. [Aside.] Oh, if he begins to moralize——

[Takes out his snuff-box.

Rosy. Fair and ugly, crooked or straight, rich or poor—flesh is grass—flowers fade!

O’Con. Here, doctor, take a pinch, and keep up your spirits.

Rosy. True, true, my friend; grief can’t mend the matter—all’s for the best; but such a woman was a great loss, lieutenant.

O’Con. To be sure, for doubtless she had mental accomplishments equal to her beauty.

Rosy. Mental accomplishments! she would have stuffed an alligator, or pickled a lizard, with any apothecary’s wife in the kingdom. Why, she could decipher a prescription, and invent the ingredients, almost as well as myself: then she was such a hand at making foreign waters!—for Seltzer, Pyrmont, Islington, or Chalybeate, she never had her equal; and her Bath and Bristol springs exceeded the originals.—Ah, poor Dolly! she fell a martyr to her own discoveries.

O’Con. How so, pray?

Rosy. Poor soul! her illness was occasioned by her zeal in trying an improvement on the Spa-water, by an infusion of rum and acid.

O’Con. Ay, ay, spirits never agree with water-drinkers.

Rosy. No, no, you mistake. Rum agreed with her well enough; it was not the rum that killed the poor dear creature, for she died of a dropsy. Well, she is gone, never to return, and has left no pledge of our loves behind. No little babe, to hang like a label round papa’s neck. Well, well, we are all mortal—sooner or later—flesh is grass—flowers fade.

O’Con. Oh, the devil!—again!

[Aside.

Rosy. Life’s a shadow—the world a stage—we strut an hour.

O’Con. Here, doctor.