shion of _flesh_, or rather _pink_-coloured hose for the ladies,
luckily coming up at the juncture, when we were on our probation for
the place of Chief Jester to S.'s Paper, established our reputation in
that line. We were pronounced a "capital hand." O the conceits which
we varied upon _red_ in all its prismatic differences! from the trite
and obvious flower of Cytherea, to the flaming costume of the lady
that has her sitting upon "many waters." Then there was the collateral
topic of ancles. What an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like
ourself, of touching that nice brink, and yet never tumbling over it,
of a seemingly ever approximating something "not quite proper;" while,
like a skilful posture-master, balancing betwixt decorums and their
opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation is
destruction; hovering in the confines of light and darkness, or where
"both seem either;" a hazy uncertain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the
Play, still putting off his expectant auditory with "Whoop, do me no
harm, good man!" But, above all, that conceit arrided us most at that
time, and still tickles our midriff to remember, where, allusively
to the flight of Astraea--_ultima Calestum terras reliquit_--we
pronounced--in reference to the stockings still--that MODESTY TAKING
HER FINAL LEAVE OF MORTALS, HER LAST BLUSH WAS VISIBLE IN HER ASCENT
TO THE HEAVENS BY THE TRACT OF THE GLOWING INSTEP. This might be
called the crowning conceit; and was esteemed tolerable writing in
those days.

But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes away; as did
the transient mode which had so favoured us. The ancles of our fair
friends in a few weeks began to reassume their whiteness, and left us
scarce a leg to stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none,
methought, so pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more
than single meanings.

Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross-buns daily consecutively
for a fortnight would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to
furnish as many jokes daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a
long twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder
execution. "Man goeth forth to his work until the evening"--from a
reasonable hour in the morning, we presume it was meant. Now as our
main occupation took us up from eight till five every day in the City;
and as our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally to do
with any thing rather than b