DR. ROSY.
Oh, poor Dolly! I never shall see her like again; such an arm for a bandage—veins that seemed to invite the lancet. Then her skin, smoothe and white as a gallipot; her mouth as large and not larger than the mouth of a penny phial; her lips conserve of roses; and then her teeth—none of your sturdy fixtures—ache as they would, it was but a small pull, and out they came. I believe I have drawn half a score of her poor dear pearls—[weeps]—But what avails her beauty? Death has no consideration—one must die as well as another.
LIEUTENANT O’CONNOR.
[Aside.] Oh, if he begins to moralize—-[Takes out his snuff-box.]
DR. ROSY.
Fair and ugly, crooked or straight, rich or poor—flesh is grass—flowers fade!
LIEUTENANT O’CONNOR.
Here, doctor, take a pinch, and keep up your spirits.
DR. ROSY.
True, true, my friend; grief can’t mend the matter—all’s for the best; but such a woman was a great loss, lieutenant.
LIEUTENANT O’CONNOR.
To be sure, for doubtless she had mental accomplishments equal to her beauty.
DR. ROSY.
Mental accomplishments! she would have stuffed an alligator, or pickled a lizard, with any apothecaru’s wife in the kingdom. Why, she could decipher a prescription, and invent the ingredients, almost as well as myself: then she was such a hand at making foreign waters!—for Seltzer, Pyrmont, Islington, or Chalybeate, she never had her equal; and her Bath and Bristol springs exceeded the originals.—Ah, poor Dolly! she fell a martyr to her own discoveries.
LIEUTENANT O’CONNOR.
How so, pray?
DR. ROSY.
Poor soul! her illness was occasioned by her zeal in trying an improvement on the Spa-water by an infusion of rum and acid.
LIEUTENANT O’CONNOR.
Ay, ay, spirits never agree with water-drinkers.