APPLICATION.
If the kind enquiries after the sick were all to be interpreted with as much frankness as those in the Fable, the porters of the great might commonly answer with the strictest propriety, that their masters were much better than was wished or desired. The charitable visits which are made to many sick people, proceed from much the same motive with that which induced the hungry Wolves to make their enquiries after the sick Ass, namely, that they may come in for some share of their remains, and feast themselves upon the reversion of their goods and chattels. The sick man’s heir longs for his estate; one friend waits in anxious expectation of a legacy, and another wants his place; it, however, does not unfrequently happen, that the mask of these selfish visitants, and their counterfeit sorrow, are seen through, and their impertinent officiousness treated with the contempt it so justly deserves.
’Tis the a world! floating about, like an illumined mote, in the immensity of endless space—and is inhabited by nations of proud pismires.—
