He would talk until his head smoked of his list of
miraculous cures--of his balsams, his anodynes, his elixirs; in the
benevolence of his soul he would, to accommodate the pockets of the poor,
sell a pennyworth of the philosopher's stone; and, as a further
illustration of his sympathy for suffering man or woman, give, even for a
kreutzer, a mouthful of the Fountain of Youth. As a water-doctor, too, his
Sagacity was inconceivable. A hundred years ago, he told to a fraction
the amount of the national debt, from a single glance at the specimen sent
him by JOHN BULL; and more, for five-and-twenty years predicted who would
be the incoming Lord Mayor of London, from an inspection of a pint of
water presented to him every season from Aldgate-pump. He could prophesy
all the politics of the Court of Aldermen from a phial filled at
Fleet-ditch; and could at any time--no trifling task--tell the amount of
corruption in the House of Commons, by taking up a handful of water at
Westminster-bridge. On his stolen visit to England--for the honour he has
done our country has never been generally known--he calculated to a nicety
how many puppies and kittens were annually drowned in the Thames, and how
many suicides--particularising the sex and dress of each sufferer--were
committed in the same period, from a bottlefull of Thames water brought to
him wherewith to dilute his brandy at the Ship public house, Greenwich--a
hostelry much frequented by Doctor TEUFELSKOPF.
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