your nine and twentieth year; what have you been doing all
this while? I had a great deal of business on my hands, says she, being
taken up the first twelve years of my life, in dressing a jointed baby,
and all the remaining part of it in reading plays and romances.

26. Very well, says he, you have employed your time to good purpose.
Away with her. The next was a plain country woman: Well, mistress, says
_Rhadamanthus_, and what have you been doing? An't please your worship,
says she, I did not live quite forty years; and in that time brought my
husband seven daughters, made him nine thousand cheeses, and left my
eldest girl with him to look after his house in my absence, and who, I
may venture to say, is us pretty a housewife as any in the country.

27. _Rhadamanthus_ smiled at the simplicity of the good woman, and
ordered the keeper of _Elysium_, to take her into his care. And you,
fair lady, says he, what have you been doing these five and thirty
years? I have been doing no hurt, I assure you sir, said she. That is
well, says he, but what good have you been doing? The lady was in great
confusion at this question, and not knowing what to answer, the two
keepers leaped out to seize her at the same time; the one took her by
the hand to convey her to _Elysium_; the other caught hold of her to
carry her away to _Erebus_.

28. But _Rhadamanthus_ observing an ingenuous modesty in her countenance
and behaviour, bid them both let her loose, and set her aside for a
re-examination when he was more at leisure. An old woman, of a proud and
sour look, presented herself next at the bar, and being asked what she
had been doing? Truly, says she, I lived three score and ten years in a
very wicked world, and was so angry at the behaviour of a parcel of
young flirts, that I past most of my last years in condemning the
follies of the times.

29. I was every day blaming the silly conduct of people about me, in
order to deter those I conversed with from falling into the like errors
and miscarriages. Very well, says _Rhadamanthus_, but did you keep the
same watchful eye over your own actions? Why truly, says she, I was so
taken up with publishing the faults of others, that I had no time to
consider my own.

30. Madam, says _Rhadamanthus_, be pleased to file off to the left, and
make room for the venerable matron that stands behind you. Old
gentlewoman, says he, I think you are fourscore? You have heard the
question, what have you been