raith, I plumpt me
down upon my knees, close by her--cheek by jowl--and prayed, and sighed,
and sung, and groaned, and gnashed my teeth as vehemently as she could do
for the life of her; ay, and turned up the whites of mine een, till the
strings awmost crackt again:--I watcht her motions, handed her till her
chair, waited on her home, got most religiously intimate with her in a
week,--married her in a fortnight, buried her in a month;--touched the
siller, and with a deep suit of mourning, a melancholy port, a sorrowful
visage, and a joyful heart, I began the world again;--and this, sir, was
the first bow, that is, the first effectual bow, I ever made till the
vanity of human nature:--now, sir, do you understand this doctrine?

_Eger_. Perfectly well, sir.

_Sir Per_. Ay, but was it not right? was it not ingenious, and weel hit
off?

_Eger_. Certainly, sir: extremely well.

_Sir Per_. My next bow, sir, was till your ain mother, whom I ran away
with fra the boarding school; by the interest of whose family I got a guid
smart place in the Treasury:--and, sir, my vary next step was intill
Parliament; the which I entered with as ardent and as determined an
ambition as ever agitated the heart of Caesar himself. Sir, I bowed, and
watched, and hearkened, and ran about, backwards and forwards; and
attended, and dangled upon the then great man, till I got intill the vary
bowels of his confidence,--and then, sir, I wriggled, and wrought, and
wriggled, till I wriggled myself among the very thick of them: hah! I got
my snack of the clothing, the foraging, the contracts, the lottery
tickets--and aw the political bonusses;--till at length, sir, I became a
much wealthier man than one half of the golden calves I had been so long a
bowing to: [_He rises, and_ Eger. _rises too._]--and was nai that bowing
to some purpose?

_Eger_. It was indeed, sir.

_Sir Per_. But are you convinced of the guid effects, and of the utility
of bowing?

_Eger_. Thoroughly, sir.

_Sir Per_. Sir, it is infallible:--but, Charles, ah! while I was thus
bowing, and wriggling, and raising this princely fortune,--ah! I met with
many heart-sores and disappointments fra the want of literature,
eloquence, and other popular abeleties. Sir, guin I could but have spoken
in the house, I should have done the deed in half the time; but the
instant I opened my mouth there, they aw fell a laughing at me;--aw which
deficiencies, sir, I determined, at any expence, to ha