Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/274

 was scarcely eatable, {287} though it looked white and delicate, and tasted like a chicken.

The term elegant is no where so little understood as in this country. One of Mr. B.'s neighbours' sons falling sick, the father applied to Mr. B.'s chest for medicine, and received it. Mr. B. next morning said to the father, "Well, sir, how did the medicine operate?" "Oh, sir, elegantly," was the reply.

The hour was now come for quitting this distinguished man and harmonious family. He wished me to stay longer, and to hear of and from me after my return to England, and that his son, Morris, who is coming to a mercantile concern at Bristol, might accompany me.

I dined, on fine roast beef, with Dr. Pugsley, physician to the settlement. Here are English elegance and comfort, but no servant. What a change! And, as the settlement is said to be healthy, what a chance for a mere doctor! In the afternoon I called on Mr. Cowling, late of Spalding, Lincolnshire, who, with his brother, is settled on a corner of a quarter-section, living without any female, and fast barbarizing, in a most miserable log-cabin, not mudded, having only one room, no furniture of any kind, save a miserable, filthy, ragged bed for himself and his brother, who is lamed, and prostrated on the floor, by a plough-share, and who, though unable to move, yet refuses a doctor. Both were more filthy, stinking, ragged, and repelling, than any {288} English stroller or beggar ever seen; garments rotting off, linen unwashed, face unshaven and unwashed, for, I should think, a month. Yet Mr. Cowling is a sensible, shrewd man, quite a philosopher, though filthiness is against the law of nature. "Here (says he) a man learns philosophy and its uses!" He expects his sisters and brothers into this miserable abode.