Where, if by engaging of his heart The world would scarce afford a part All had been had that could be wished Upon so rich a pawn, Were it ambrosia to be dished, Or nectar to be drawn. Duggs. How, dame! a dry nurse better than a wet nurse? Kecks. Ay. Is not summer better than winter? Duggs. O, you dream of a dry summer. Kecks. And you are so wet, you are the worse again. Do you remember my Lady Kickingup's child, that you gave such a bleach to 'twas never clear since? Duggs. That was my Lady Kickingup's own doing (you dry chip you), and not mine. Kecks. 'Twas yours, Mrs. Wetter-and you shrunk in the wetting for't, if you be remembered; for she turned you away, I am sure.-Wet moons, you know, were ever good weed-springers. Duggs. My moon's no wetter than thine, goody Caudle-maker. You for making of costly caudles, as good a nurse as I! Hold. Why, can I carry no sway nor stroke among you! Will ye open yourselves thus, and let every one enter into your secrets?-Shall they take it up between you, in God's name? Proffer it 'em. I am nobody, I, I know nothing!-I am a midwife of this month! I never held a lady's back till now, you think. Duggs. We never thought so, Mistress Holdback. Hold. Go to, you do think so, upon that point, and say as much in your behaviour. Who, I pray you, provided your places for you? was't not I? When upon the first view of my lady's breasts, and an inspection of what passed from her, with the white wine, and the opal cloud, and my suffumigation.— I told her ladyship at first she was sped, and then upon her pain after drinking the mead and hydromel, I assured her it was so without all peradventureI know nothing! And this, when my lord was deportunate with me to know my opinion whether it was a boy or a girl that her ladyship went withal, I had not my signs and my prognostics about meas the goodness of her ladyship's complexion, the coppidness of her belly, on the right side, the lying of it so high in the cabinet, to pronounce it a boy! Nor I could not say and assure upon the difference of the paps, when the right breast grew harder, the nipple red, rising like a strawberry, the milk white and thick, and standing in pearls upon my nail (the glass and the slide-stone); a boy for my money! nor when the milk dissolved not in water, nor scattered, but sunk a boy still! No, upon the very day of my lady's labour, when the wives came in, I offered no wagers, not the odds, ay, three to one? Having observed the moon the night before, and her ladyship set her right foot foremost, the right pulse beat quicker and stronger, and her right eye grown and sparkling! I assure your lordship I offered to hold master doctor a Discretion it was a boy; and if his doctorship had laid with me and ventured, his worship had lost his discretion. Kecks. Why, mistress, here's nobody calls your skill in question; we know that you can tell when a woman goes with a tympany, the mole, or the mooncalf. Hold. Ay, and whether it be the flesh mole, or the wind mole, or the water mole, I thank God, and our mistress Nature: she is God's chambermaid, and the midwife is hers.-We can examine virginity and frigidity, the sufficiency and capability of the persons; by our places we urge all the conclusions. Many a good thing passes through the midwife's hand, many a merry tale by her mouth, many a glad cup through her lips: she is a leader of wives, the lady of light hearts, and the queen of the gossips. Kecks. But what is this to us, Mistress Holdback? the which is the better nurse, the wet or the dry? Hold. Nay, that make an end of between yourselves. I am sure I am dry with talking to you. Give me a cup of hippocras. Duggs. Why, see there now whether dryness be not a defect out of her own mouth, that she is fain to call for moisture to wet her! Does not the infant do so when it would suck? What stills the child when it's dry but the teat? Kecks. But when it is wet, in the blankets, with your superfluities, what quiets it then? It is not the two bottles at the breasts, that when you have emptied you do nothing but drink to fill again, will do it. It is the opening of him, and bathing of him, and the washing and the cleansing, and especially the drying that nourishes the child-clearing his eyes and nostrils, wiping his ears, fashioning his head with stroking it between the hands, clapping a piece of scarlet on his mole, forming his mouth for kissing again he come at age, careful laying his legs and arms straight, and swathing them so justly as his mother's maids may leap at him when he bounces out on his blankets. These are the offices of a nurse!—a true nurse. What beauty would ever behold him hereafter if I now by negligence of binding should either make him cramp-shouldered, crookedlegged, splay-footed, or by careless placing the candle in a light should send him forth into the world with a pair of false eyes! No, 'tis the nurse, and by excellence the dry nurse, that gives him fashionable feet, legs, hands, mouth, eyes, nose, or whatever, in member else, is acceptable to ladies. Duggs. Nay, there you wrong Mistress Holdback, for it is she that gives him measure I'm sure. Hold. Ay, and I'll justify his measure. Duggs. And what increases that measure, but his milk, his sucking, and his battening? Kecks. Yes, and your eating and drinking to get more; your decoctions and caudles, spurging, bathing, and boxing your breasts ;-thou mis-proud creature, I am ashamed of thee! Duggs. How enviously she talks! as if any nearer or nobler office could be done the child than to feed him, or any more necessary and careful than to increase that which is his nutriment, from both which I am truly and principally named his nurse. Kecks. Principally! O the pride of thy paps! Would I were the ague in thy breasts, for thy sake, to bore 'em as full of holes as a cullender-as if there were no nutriment but thy milk, or nothing could nurse a child but sucking! Why, if there were no milk in nature, is there no other food?-How were my lady provided else against your going to men, (if the toy should take you,) and the corruption of your milk that way? Duggs. How! I go to man, and corrupt my milk, thou dried eel-skin! Kecks. You, mistress wet-eel-by-the-tail, if you have a mind to it. Such a thing has been done. Duggs. I defy thee, I, thou onion-eater! And, now I think on't, my lady shall know of your close diet, your cheese and chibbols, with your fresh tripe and garlick in private, it makes a sweet perfume i' the nursery! as if you had swallowed surreverence. Ah, the pity such a one should ever come about any good body's child! thou'lt stifle it with thy breath one of these mornings. Kecks. Indeed you had like to have overlaid it the other night, and prevented its Christendom, if I had not looked unto you when you came so bedewed out of the wine cellar, and so watered your couch, that, to save your credit with my lady next morning, you were glad to lay it upon your innocent bed-fellow, and slander him to his mother how plentifully he had sucked! This was none of your dry feasts now, this was a soaker. Hold. Ay, by my faith, was't; an you overflow so it is even time to stop the breach and pack you both hence here comes a wise man will tell us another tale. Enter a Mathematician." 'Tis clear, in heaven all good aspects agree But what need this so far our star extend As from him being their fount, all are produced, 6 i. e. an astrologer. |