Page:The Hind and Panther transvers'd to the story of the country mouse and the city mouse (1709).djvu/30

 speak very well. And I have heard Men, and considerable Men too, talk the very same things, a great deal worse.

Johns.Nay, without doubt, Mr. Bayes, they have received no small advantage from the smoothness of your Numbers.

Bayes.Ay, ay, I can do't, if I list: though you must not think I have been so dull as to mind these things my self, but 'tis the advantage of our Coffee-house, that from their Talk one may write a very good Polemical Discourse, without ever troubling one's Head with the Books of Controversie. For I can take the slightest of their Arguments, and clap 'em pertly into four Verses, which shall stare any London Divine in the Face. Indeed your knotty Reasonings with a long Train of Majors and Minors, and the Devil and all, are too barbarous for my Stile; but I'gad, I can flourish better with one of these twinkling Arguments, than the best of 'em can fight with t'other. But we return to our Mouse, and now I've brought 'em together, let 'em 'en speak for themselves, which they will do extreamly well, or I'm mistaken: and pray observe, Gentlemen, if in one you don't find all the Delicacy of a luxurious City-Mouse, and in the other all the plain simplicity of a sober serious Matron.

There, did not I tell you she'd be nice?

Smith.I did not hear she had a Spotted Muff before.

Bayes.Why no more she has not now: but she has a Skin that might make a Spotted Muff. There's a pretty Figure now unknown to the Ancients.