 all at once. - You must have a little
patience. I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions
also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind
of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As
you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning
betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault,
will terminate in friendship. -- O diem præclarum! -- then nothing which has
touched me will be thought trifling in its nature, or tedious in its telling.
Therefore, my dear friend and companion, if you should think me somewhat sparing
of my narrative on my first setting out, - bear with me, - and let me go on, and
tell my story my own way: -- or if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the
road, -- or should sometimes put on a fool's cap with a bell to it, for a moment
or two as we pass along, - don't fly off, - but rather courteously give me
credit 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.
 

                                   Chap. 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
there-abouts, 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 withall an object of compassion
