Dr. Freind, like too many of the physicians of his time—under Queen Anne—was not very careful to keep his head clear and hand steady by moderation in tavern potations; and more often than not he was tipsy when he visited his patients. Once he entered the chamber of a lady of high rank in such a state of intoxicated confusion, that he could do nothing more than mutter to himself, "Drunk—drunk—drunk, by ——!" Happily, or unhappily, the lady, from the same cause, was not in any better case than the physician; and when she came to herself, she was informed by her maid that the doctor had briefly and gruffly described her condition, and then abruptly taken his leave. Freind next day was puzzling as to the apology he should offer to his patient for his unfitness to deal with her ailment, when to his great joy there came a note from the lady, enclosing a handsome fee, and entreating him to keep his own counsel as to what he had seen.
RADCLIFFE AND KNELLER.
Sir Godfrey Kneller and Dr. Radcliffe lived next door to each other in Bow Street, just after the latter had come up to town, and were extremely intimate. Kneller had a very fine garden, and as the doctor was fond of flowers, he permitted him to have a door into it. Radcliffe's servants, however, gathering and destroying the flowers, Kneller sent to inform him that he would nail up the door; to which Radcliffe, in his rough manner, replied, "Tell him he may do anything but paint it."—"Well," retorted Kneller, "he may say what he will; for tell him, I will take anything from him, except physic."
SLAPS FOR SLEEPERS IN CHURCH.
A Methodist preacher once, observing that several of his congregation had fallen asleep, exclaimed with a loud voice, "A fire! a fire!" "Where? where?" cried his auditors, whom the alarm had thoroughly aroused from their slumbers. "In the place of judgment," said the preacher, "for those who sleep under the ministry of the holy gospel." Another preacher, of a different persuasion, more remarkable for drowsy hearers, finding himself in a like unpleasant situation with his auditory, or rather dormitory, suddenly stopped in his discourse, and, addressing himself in a whispering tone to a number of noisy children in the gallery, said, "Silence! silence! children; if you keep up such a noise, you will waken all the old folks below." Dr. South, chaplain of Charles II., once when preaching before the Court—then composed, as every one knows, of the most profligate and dissolute men in the nation—saw, in the middle of his discourse, that sleep had gradually made a conquest of his hearers. He immediately stopped short, and, changing his tone, called out to Lord Lauderdale three times. His Lordship standing up, Dr. South said, with great composure, "My Lord, I am sorry to interrupt your repose; but I must beg of you that you will not snore quite so loud, lest you awaken his Majesty."
Lassenius, chaplain to the Danish Court in the end of the seventeenth century, for a long time, to his vexation, had seen that during his sermon the greater part of the congregation fell asleep. One day he suddenly stopped, and, pulling shuttlecock and battledore from his pocket, began to play with them in the pulpit. This odd behaviour naturally attracted the attention of the hearers who were still awake; they jogged the sleepers, and in a very short time everybody was lively, and looking to the pulpit with the greatest astonishment. Then Lassenius began a very severe castigatory discourse, saying, "When I announce to you sacred and important truths, you are not ashamed to go to sleep; but when I play the fool, you are all eye and ear."
When Fenelon, as almoner, attended Louis XIV. to a sermon preached by a Capuchin, he fell asleep. The Capuchin perceived it, and breaking off his discourse, cried out, "Awake that sleeping Abbé, who comes here only to pay his court to the King;" a reproof which Fenelon himself often related with pleasure after he became Archbishop of Cambray.
A PRESCRIPTION FOR LONG LIFE.
In the reign of Francis I. of France, the saying went—