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Jane Douglas (1761)

The Covent Garden Calendar - Chapter XXII.

Chapter XXII.


Contains an account of the conclusion of Janes's adventures with the magistrate.

            His worship who always punctually kept his word, did not fail to pay Jane a visit at the time agreed upon. Jane made more than ordinary preparations for his reception, and the justice laying aside the dignity of a magistrate, for a while, drank copiously of arrack-punch after supper.

            About eleven o'clock he retired with a damsel, whose charms were sufficiently powerful, to make him resolve to dishonour the marriage-bed.

            Indeed he hereby only gave his wife her due; for she had taken care to adorn her husband's head, with as large a pair of horns, as ever were worn by a magistrate.

            His worship was just preparing to glut himself with the joys of love, for he had as good a stomach for a pretty girl as a public-feast; when all on a sudden, a quarrel happening in the next apartment, amongst a set of drunken bucks, one of them in the confusion and uproar burst into the room where this worthy guardian of the laws was solacing himself with the lady of pleasure above-mentioned.

            But how great was the surprise of the young fellow, when he perceived this was his father who was constantly preaching morality to him, and making him remonstrances upon his extravagant conduct.

            Their surprise was mutual and the confusion of the old gentleman equal to that of the Roman censor, when surprised, drunk in the streets of Rome.

            The young fellow, after rallying his venerable sire, retired like a dutiful son, and left him to enjoy the pleasures of unlawful love.

            However he did not fail to remind him the next morning of the scene which he had beheld; and by threatening to inform his mother of it, so terrified his poor worship, that he was ever after obliged to bear with irregular conduct, and to supply him in all his extravagancies.

            Jane, was always pleased at these adventures, for the consequence of grave and substantial tradesmen frequenting her house was that she could always have bail in the space of half an hour.

            It has been reported that a certain celebrated Methodist preacher, was once seen at Jane's house, in company with two whores, over a bowl of arrack, and that being rallied by some of the young bucks, he lifted upon his eyes, and declared in the most solemn manner, that he came with a design to exhort the women to quit their evil course of life, and turn their hearts to grace: adding that none but the diseased had occasion for a physician and that the men of the cloth were sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

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