“You must know, sir, I was born in this fog, and so was my mother and her relatives for many past generations; therefore you will see, sir, a fog is as natural to me as a duck-pool to a dab-chick. When poor dame Piper died, I found myself exceedingly melancholy to live alone on these marshes, so determined to change my condition by taking a wife. It was very fortunate for me, sir, I knew a rich old farmer in the uplands, and he had three blooming daughters, and that which made the thing more desirable, he had determined to give each a portion of his honourably acquired property. The farmer had for many years been acquainted with my good father, gone to rest, and this gave me courage to lay my case before him. The elder girl was the bird for me, the farmer gave his consent, and we were married. Directly after, I quitted the uplands for the fog, with a pretty wife and five hundred golden guineas in my pocket, as good as ever bribed a lawyer to sell his client, or a parliament-man to betray his country. This was a good beginning, sir, but alas! there is no comfort without a cross; my wife had been used from her infancy to a fine keen open air, and our lowland vapours so deranged her constitution, that within nine months, Margaret left me and went to heaven.
“Being so suddenly deprived of the society of one good woman, where could I apply for another, better than to the sack from whence I drew the first sample? The death of my dear wife reflected no disgrace on me, and the old man’s second daughter having no objection to a good husband, we presently entered into the bonds of holy matrimony, and after a few days of merriment, I came home with Susan, from the sweet hills to the fogs of the lowlands, and with four hundred as good guineas in my purse as ever gave new springs to the life of poverty. Similar causes, sir, they say produce similar effects; and this is certainly true, for in somewhere about nine months more, Susan slept with her sister.
“I ran to the uplands again, to condole with my poor old Nestor, and some how or other so managed the matter, that his youngest daughter, Rosetta, conceived a tender affection for Piper. I shall never forget it, sir, while I have existence; I had been there but a few days, when the good farmer, with tears in his eyes, thus addressed me: ‘Piper, you have received about nine hundred pounds of my money, and I have about the same sum left; now, son, as you know how to make a good use of it, I think it is a pity it should go out of the family; therefore, if you have a fancy for Rosetta, I will give you three hundred pounds more, and the remnant at my departure.’
“Sir, I had always an aversion to stand shilly shally, ‘make haste and leave nothing to waste,’ says the old proverb. The kind girl was consenting, and we finished the contract over a mug of her father’s best October. From the hills we ran to the fogland, and in less than two years more, poor Rosetta was carried up the churchway path, where the three sisters, as they used to do in their infancy, lie by the side of each other; and the old man dying of grief for the loss of his favourite, I placed him at their head, and became master of a pretty property.
“A short time after, a wealthy widow from Barham, (of the same family,) came in the summer time to our place. I saw her at church, and she set her cap at Piper; I soon married her for her Eldorado metal, but alas! she turned out a shrew. ‘Nil desperandum’ said I, Piper, to myself, the winter is coming in good time; the winter came, and stood my friend; for the fog and the ague took her by the hand and led her to Abraham’s bosom.
“An innkeeper’s relict was the next I ventured on, she had possessions at Sittingbourne, and they were hardly mine before my good friend, the fog, laid Arabella ‘at all-fours’ under the turf, in St. Mary’s churchyard; and now, sir, her sister, the cast-off of a rich Jew, fell into my trap, and I led her smiling, like a vestal, to the temple of Hymen; but although the most lively and patient creature on earth, she could not resist the powers of the fog, and I for the sixth time became a widower, with an income of three hundred a year, and half the cottages in this blessed hundred. To be brief, sir, I was now in want of nothing but a contented mind; thus, sir, through the fog you treated with such malignity, I became qualified for a country member. But alas! sir, there is always something unpleasant to mingle with the best of human affairs, envy is ever skulking behind us, to squeeze her gall-bag into the cup of our comforts, and when we think ourselves in safety, and may sing the song of ‘O! be joyful,’ our merriment ends with a ‘miseracordia.’”
After a short pause, “Look, sir,” said Piper, in a loud whisper, “at that woman in the bar, now making the grog, she is my seventh wife; with her I had a fortune also, but of a different nature from all the rest. I married her without proper consideration—the wisest are sometimes overtaken; Solomon had his disappointments; would you think it, sir? she was fogborn like myself, and withal, is so tough in her constitution, that I fear she will hold me a tight tug to the end of my existence, and become my survivor.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” interjected Mrs. Piper, (who had heard all the long tale of the tapster,) “there is no fear about that, John, and bury as many upland husbands, when you lie under the turf, as you, with the fog, have smothered wives.”
Our Yorick now became chop-fallen, and a brisk wind springing up from the north-west, the fog abated, and we took to our boat.[246]