dit for a
little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;--and as we jog on,
either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do any thing,--only keep
your temper.

Chapter 1.VII.

In the same village where my father and my mother dwelt, dwelt also a
thin, upright, motherly, notable, good old body of a midwife, who with
the help of a little plain good sense, and some years full employment
in her business, in which she had all along trusted little to her own
efforts, and a great deal to those of dame Nature,--had acquired, in her
way, no small degree of reputation in the world:--by which word world,
need I in this place inform your worship, that I would be understood to
mean no more of it, than a small circle described upon the circle of the
great world, of four English miles diameter, or thereabouts, of which
the cottage where the good old woman lived is supposed to be the
centre?--She had been left it seems a widow in great distress, with
three or four small children, in her forty-seventh year; and as she was
at that time a person of decent carriage,--grave deportment,--a
woman moreover of few words and withal an object of compassion, whose
distress, and silence under it, called out the louder for a friendly
lift: the wife of the parson of the parish was touched with pity; and
having often lamented an inconvenience to which her husband's flock had
for many years been exposed, inasmuch as there was no such thing as a
midwife, of any kind or degree, to be got at, let the case have been
never so urgent, within less than six or seven long miles riding; which
said seven long miles in dark nights and dismal roads, the country
thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, was almost equal to fourteen;
and that in effect was sometimes next to having no midwife at all; it
came into her head, that it would be doing as seasonable a kindness to
the whole parish, as to the poor creature herself, to get her a little
instructed in some of the plain principles of the business, in order
to set her up in it. As no woman thereabouts was better qualified to
execute the plan she had formed than herself, the gentlewoman very
charitably undertook it; and having great influence over the female part
of the parish, she found no difficulty in effecting it to the utmost of
her wishes. In truth, the parson join'd his interest with his wife's in
the whole affair, and in order to do things as they should be, and give
the poor soul as good a title by