In the same village where my father and my mother dwelt, dwelt also a thin,
upright, motherly, notable, good old body of a midwife, who with the help
of a little plain good sense, and some years full employment in her
business, in which she had all along trusted little to her own efforts, and
a great deal to those of dame Nature,--had acquired, in her way, no small
degree of reputation in the world:--by which word world, need I in this
place inform your worship, that I would be understood to mean no more of
it, than a small circle described upon the circle of the great world, of
four English miles diameter, or thereabouts, of which the cottage where the
good old woman lived is supposed to be the centre?--She had been left it
seems a widow in great distress, with three or four small children, in her
forty-seventh year; and as she was at that time a person of decent
carriage,--grave deportment,--a woman moreover of few words and withal an
object of compassion, whose distress, and silence under it, called out the
louder for a friendly lift: the wife of the parson of the parish was
touched with pity; and having often lamented an inconvenience to which her
husband's flock had for many years been exposed, inasmuch as there was no
such thing as a midwife, of any kind or degree, to be got at, let the case
have been never so urgent, within less than six or seven long miles riding;
which said seven long miles in dark nights and dismal roads, the country
thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, was almost equal to fourteen;
and that in effect was sometimes next to having no midwife at all; it came
into her head, that it would be doing as seasonable a kindness to the whole
parish, as to the poor creature herself, to get her a little instructed in
some of the plain principles of the business, in order to set her up in it.
As no woman thereabouts was better qualified to execute the plan she had
formed than herself, the gentlewoman very charitably undertook it; and
having great influence over the female part of the parish, she found no
difficulty in effecting it to the utmost of her wishes. In truth, the