The next street we came into, we saw a tall thin-gutted mortal driving a wheel-barrow of pears before him, and crying in a hoarse tone, _pears twenty a penny_; looking him earnestly in the face, I presently knew him to be beau _Heveiningham_, but I found he was shy, and so took no further notice of him. Not ten doors from hence, says Mr. _Nokes_, lives poor _Norton_, that shot himself. I ask’d him in what quality, he answered me, as a sub-operator to a disperser of darkness, _anglicè_, a journeyman to a tallow-chandler. I would willingly have made him a short visit, but was intercepted in my design by a brace of fellows that were link’d to their good behaviour, like a pair of _Spanish_ galley-slaves; tho’ they agreed as little as _Jowler_ and _Ringwood_ coupled together, for one of ’em lugg’d one away, and his brother the other. I soon knew them to be _Dick Baldwin_, the whig-bookseller, and _Mason_ the non-swearing parson, whom, as I was afterwards informed, judge _Minos_, had order’d to be yoak’d thus, to be a mutual plague and punishment to one another. Both of ’em made up to us as hard as they could drive. _Well, Sir, says the_ Levite, _what comfortable news do you bring from St._ Germains? _Our old friend_ Lewis le Grand _is well I hope. Damn_ Lewis le Grand, _and all his adherents, cries_ Dick Baldwin. _Pray Sir, what racy touches of scandal have been publish’d of late_, by my worthy friends, _Sam. Johnson_, Mr. _Tutchin_, and honest Mr. _Atwood_; and the gallows that groan’d so long for _Robin Hog_ the messenger, when is it like to lose its longing? Have no fresh batteries attack’d the court lately from honest Mr. _Darby_’s in _Bartholomew-Close_? And prithee what new piracies from the quakers at the _Pump_ in _Little-Britain_? What new whales, devils, ghosts, murders; from _Wilkins_ in the _Fryars_? But above all, dear Sir, of what kidney are the present sheriffs; and particularly my lord-mayor, how stands he affected? Why _Dick_, says I to him, fearing to be stunn’d with more interrogatories, tho’ most of the folks I have seen here are changed either for the better or the worse, yet I find thou art the true, primitive, busy, pragmatical, prating, muttering _Dick Baldwin_ still, and will be so to the end of the chapter. In the name of the three furies, what should make thee trouble thyself about sheriffs and lord-mayor? But thou art of the same foolish belief, I find, with thy brother coxcombs at _North_’s coffee-house, who think all the fate of christendom depends upon the choice of a lord-mayor; whereas to talk of things familiarly, and as we ought to do, what is this two-legg’d animal ycleped a lord-mayor, but a certain temporary machine of the city’s setting up, who on certain appointed days is oblig’d to ride on horse-back to please the _Cheapside_ wives, who must scuffle his way thro’ so many furlongs of custard, who is only terrible to delinquent-bakers, oyster-women, and