A GRAND UPRIGHT.
REFLECTIONS ON WATER.
“When the butt is out, we will drink water: not a drop before.”—TEMPEST.
I HAVE Stefano’s aversion to Water. I never take any by chance into my mouth, without the proneness of our Tritons and Dolphins of the Fountain,—to spout it forth again. It is, on the palate, as in tubs and hand-basins, egregiously washy. It hath not for me, even what is called “an amiable weakness.” For the sake only of quantity, not quality, do I sometimes adulterate my Cogniac or Geneva with the flimsy fluid. Aquarius is not my sign; at the praises heaped on Sir Hugh Myddelton, for leading his trite streamlet up to London,—my lip curleth. Methinks if such a sloppy labour could at one time more than another betray a misguided taste, it was in those days, when we are told,—“The Grete Conduict, in Chepe, did runne forth Wyne.” And then to hear talk withal of the New River Head,—as if, forsooth, the weak current poured even from Ware unto London, were capable of that goodly headed capital, the caput, of Stout Porter, or lusty Ale.
The taste for aquatics is none of mine. I laugh at Cowes’—it should be Calves’—Regattas; it passeth my understanding, to conceive the pleasure of contending with all your sail and sea, your might and main, for a prize cup of water. Gentle reader, if ever we two should encounter at good-men’s feasts, say not before me, that “your mouth waters,” for fear of my compelled rejoinder, “The more pump you!”
THE ARCH-ENEMY.
I am told—Dic mihi—by Sir Lauder Dick, that the great floods is Morayshire destroyed I know not how many Scottish bridges,—and I believe it. The element was always our Arch-Enemy. Witness the Deluge, when the whole human-kind would have perished, with water on the chest, but for Noah’s chest on the water. Drowning—by some called Dying made Easy—is to my notions horrible. Conceive an unfortunate gentleman—not by any means thirsty—compelled to swill gulp after gulp of the vapid fluid, even to swelling, “as the water you know will swell a man.” If I said I would rather be hanged, it would be but the truth; although “Veritas in Puteo” hath given me almost a disrelish for truth itself.