insurance for tobacco-pipes, martyrs of the modern zeal, volumes of
poetry, shadows . . . . and rivers, that these, nor any of these,
shall receive damage by fire. From whence our friendly societies
may plainly find themselves to be only transcribers from this
original, though the one and the other have been of great benefit to
the undertakers as well as of equal to the public.

Lord Peter was also held the original author of puppets and raree-
shows, the great usefulness whereof being so generally known, I
shall not enlarge farther upon this particular.

But another discovery for which he was much renowned was his famous
universal pickle. For having remarked how your common pickle in use
among housewives was of no farther benefit than to preserve dead
flesh and certain kinds of vegetables, Peter with great cost as well
as art had contrived a pickle proper for houses, gardens, towns,
men, women, children, and cattle, wherein he could preserve them as
sound as insects in amber. Now this pickle to the taste, the smell,
and the sight, appeared exactly the same with what is in common
service for beef, and butter, and herrings (and has been often that
way applied with great success), but for its may sovereign virtues
was quite a different thing. For Peter would put in a certain
quantity of his powder pimperlim-pimp, after which it never failed
of success. The operation was performed by spargefaction in a
proper time of the moon. The patient who was to be pickled, if it
were a house, would infallibly be preserved from all spiders, rats,
and weasels; if the party affected were a dog, he should be exempt
from mange, and madness, and hunger. It also infallibly took away
all scabs and lice, and scalled heads from children, never hindering
the patient from any duty, either at bed or board.