recognized by all.

Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my stream of eloquence, and
spout forth a stream of water, to replenish the trough for this teamster
and his two yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or somewhere
along that way. No part of my business is pleasanter than the watering
of cattle. Look! how rapidly they lower the water-mark on the sides of
the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened with a gallon or
two apiece, and they can afford time to breathe it in, with sighs of calm
enjoyment. Now they roll their quiet eyes around the brim of their
monstrous drinking-vessel. An ox is your true toper.

But I perceive, my dear auditors, that you are impatient for the
remainder of my discourse. Impute it, I beseech you, to no defect of
modesty, if I insist a little longer on so fruitful a topic as my own
multifarious merits. It is altogether for your good. The better you
think of me, the better men and women will you find yourselves. I shall
say nothing of my all-important aid on washing-days; though, on that
account alone, I might call myself the household god of a hundred
families. Far be it from me also to hint, my respectable friends, at the
show of dirty faces which you would present, without my pains to keep you
clean. Nor will I remind you how often when the midnight bells make you
tremble for your combustible town, you have tied to the Town Pump, and
found me always at my post, firm amid the confusion, and ready to drain
my vital current in your behalf. Neither is it worth while to lay much
stress on my claims to a medical diploma, as the physician, whose simple
rule of practice is preferable to all the nauseous lore, which has found
men sick or left them so, since the days of Hippocrates. Let us take a
broader view of my beneficial influence on mankind.