up both my legs, and makes me swallow down a horrid mixture. I
thought it a harsh entrance into life, to begin with taking physic;
but I was forced to it, or else must have taken down a great
instrument in which she gave it me. When I was thus dressed, I was
carried to a bedside, where a fine young lady, my mother I wot, had
like to have hugged me to death. From her they faced me about, and
there was a thing with quite another look from the rest of the room,
to whom they talked about my nose. He seemed wonderfully pleased to
see me; but I knew since, my nose belonged to another family. That
into which I was born is one of the most numerous amongst you;
therefore crowds of relations came every day to congratulate my
arrival; among others my cousin Betty, the greatest romp in nature;
she whisks me such a height over her head that I cried out for fear
of falling. She pinched me, and called me squealing chit, and threw
me into a girl's arms that was taken in to tend me. The girl was
very proud of the womanly employment of a nurse, and took upon her
to strip and dress me a-new, because I made a noise, to see what
ailed me; she did so, and stuck a pin in every joint about me. I
still cried; upon which she lays me on my face in her lap; and, to
quiet me, fell a-nailing in all the pins by clapping me on the back
and screaming a lullaby. But my pain made me exalt my voice above
hers, which brought up the nurse, the witch I first saw, and my
grandmother. The girl is turned downstairs, and I stripped again,
as well to find what ailed me as to satisfy my grandam's farther
curiosity. This good old woman's visit was the cause of all my
troubles. You are to understand that I was hitherto bred by hand,
and anybody that stood next gave me pap, if I did but open my lips;
insomuch that I was grown so cunning as to pretend myself asleep
when I was not, to prevent my being crammed. But my grandmother
began a loud lecture upon the idleness of the wives of this age,