worse than their fortune. It is true I have broke my nose against
this post, because Providence either forgot, or did not think it
convenient, to twitch me by the elbow and give me notice to avoid
it. But let not this encourage either the present age of posterity
to trust their noses unto the keeping of their eyes, which may prove
the fairest way of losing them for good and all. For, O ye eyes, ye
blind guides, miserable guardians are ye of our frail noses; ye, I
say, who fasten upon the first precipice in view, and then tow our
wretched willing bodies after you to the very brink of destruction.
But alas! that brink is rotten, our feet slip, and we tumble down
prone into a gulf, without one hospitable shrub in the way to break
the fall--a fall to which not any nose of mortal make is equal,
except that of the giant Laurcalco {147a}, who was Lord of the
Silver Bridge. Most properly, therefore, O eyes, and with great
justice, may you be compared to those foolish lights which conduct
men through dirt and darkness till they fall into a deep pit or a
noisome bog."

This I have produced as a scantling of Jack's great eloquence and
the force of his reasoning upon such abstruse matters.

He was, besides, a person of great design and improvement in affairs
of devotion, having introduced a new deity, who has since met with a
vast number of worshippers, by some called Babel, by others Chaos,
who had an ancient temple of Gothic structure upon Salisbury plain,
famous for its shrine and celebration by pilgrims.

When he had some roguish trick to play, he would down with his
knees, up with his eyes, and fall to prayers though in the midst of
the kennel. Then it was that those who understood his pranks would