Then There Was A Still More Terrible Offence - A Hungry Man Picked Up A
Rabbit.
'How dared John Bartlett for to venture for to go for to grab
it?' But they put him
In gaol and cured him of 'that there villanous
habit,' which rhymes, and the tale thereof may be found by the student of
old times in the 'Punch' of the day - a good true honest manly Punch, who
brought his staff down heavily on the head of abuses and injustice. We do
things every day in the present age equally unjust and cruel, only we
cannot see them; as some one observed, one cannot see the eye because it
is so close to the sight. In the almost sacred name of education
tyrannies are being enacted surpassing anything recorded in the most
outlying village in the most outlying time. One constantly sees cases of
poor people sent to prison because they happen to have children. No other
reason can be detected.
Our great-grandfathers' doctors never used to trouble themselves to write
prescriptions for their poorer patients; they used to keep two or three
mixtures always made up ready in great jars, and ladle them out. There
was the bread and cheese mixture, very often called for, as the ailments
of the labourers are commonly traceable to a heavy diet of cheese. As an
old doctor used to say when he was called to a cottage, 'Hum; s'pose
you've been eating too much fat bacon and cabbage!' Another was the club
mixture, called for about May, when the village clubs are held and extra
beer disturbs the economy.
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