WHY there is such a mobbing at the other side of the fair, says Sam, as you never saw in your life, and one fat fellow has got among them that has made me laugh immoderately—Stand further, good folks, says he, what a mob is here! Who raked all this filthy crowd together? Honest friend, take away your elbow. What a beastly crew am I got among! What a smell! Oh, and such squeezing. Why, you overgrown sloven, says a footman, that stood by, who makes half so much noise and crowding as you? reduce your own fat paunch to a reasonable compass, sirrah, and there will be room enough for us all. Upon this, the whole company set up a shout, and crowding around my friend Tunbelly, so left an opening, through which I made my escape, and have brought off Dick Wilson with me, who, by being heartily squeezed, and having twelve of his ten toes trod off, is now cured of his impertinent curiosity. But you desire an account of the fair, and I mean to gratify you. The first thing I saw which gave me pleasure, was old Gaffer Gingerbread’s stall.—See him, see
Here’s gingerbread, gingerbread here of the best.
Come buy all I have, and I’ll give you the rest.
The man of the world for gingerbread. What do you buy, what do you buy? says the old gentleman; please to buy a gingerbread wife, sir; here’s a very delicate one. Indeed there is too much gold on the nose; but that is no objection to those who drive Smithfield bargains, and marry their wives by weight. Will you please to have a gingerbread husband, madam; I assure you, you may have a worse; or a watch, madam; here are watches for belles, beaux, bucks, and blockheads. But here comes Master Punch. See, there he is, with his hunch at his back. The crowd that came with him obliged us to leave the place: but just as we were going, Giles called out, Gentlemen, buy a house before you go. ’Tis better to buy than to build. You have heard of the Cock that crowed in the morn, that waked the Priest all shaven and shorn, that married the Man all tattered and torn, that kissed the Maiden all forlorn, that milked the Cow with the crumpled horn, that tossed the Dog, that worried the Cat, that killed the Rat, that ate the Malt, that lay in the House that Jack built. If there is any part you do not like, you may eat it; buy, gentlemen, buy, and don’t build. Many of my friends have ruined themselves by building. The insufferable folly of building a fine house, has obliged many a man to lie in the street. Observe what the poet says on the subject:
The man who builds the finest place,
And cannot for it pay,
Is sure to feel his wretched case,
While others in it lay.
