BRIDGET’S METHOD OF MENDING STOCKINGS.
A Portland paper tells how a servant girl there mended her stockings. “When a hole appeared in the toe, Bridget tied a string around the stocking below the aperture and cut off the projecting portion. This operation was repeated as often as necessary, each time pulling the stocking down a little, until at last it was nearly all cut away, when Bridget sewed on new legs, and thus kept her stockings always in repair.”
Doctors’ Wigs.
For the space of about three centuries the physician’s wig was his most prominent insignia of office. Who invented it, or why it was invented, I am unable to learn. The name wig is Anglo-Saxon. Hogarth, in his “Undertaker’s Arms,” has given us some correct samples of doctors’ wigs. Of the fifteen heads the only unwigged one is that of a woman—Mrs. Mapp, the bone-setter. The one at her left is Taylor, the “quack oculist;” the other at her right is Ward, who got rich on a pill. Mrs. Mapp is sketched in our chapter on Female Doctors. Isn’t she lovely? And how Taylor and Ward lean towards her!
YE ANCIENT DOCTOR.
“Each son of Sol, to make him look more big,
Wore an enormous, grave, three-tailed wig;
His clothes full trimmed, with button-holes behind;
Stiff were the skirts, with buckram stoutly lined;
The cloth-cut velvet, or more reverend black,
Full made and powdered half way down his back;
Large muslin cuffs, which near the ground did reach,
With half a dozen buttons fixed to each.
Grave were their faces—fixed in solemn state;
These men struck awe; their children carried weight.
In reverend wigs old heads young shoulders bore;
And twenty-five or thirty seemed threescore.”
Harvey’s Habits.
I think Harvey should have been represented in a wig. They were worn by doctors in his day, though John Aubrey makes no mention of Dr. Harvey’s wearing one. He (Aubrey) says, “Harvey was not tall, but of a lowly stature; round faced, olive complexion, little eyes, round, black, and very full of spirit. His hair was black as a raven, but quite white twenty years before he died. I remember he was wont to drink coffee with his brother Eliab before coffee-houses were in fashion in London.
“He, with all his brothers, was very choleric, and in younger days wore a dagger, as the fashion then was; but this doctor would be apt to draw out his dagger upon very slight occasions.
