We had not parted with him as many minutes a man may beget his likeness in, but who should we meet but _Mumford_ the player, looking as pale as a ghost, falling forward as gently as a catterpillar cross a sicamore-leaf, gaping for a little air, like a sinner just come out of the powdering tub, crying out as he crept towards us, _Oh my back! confound ’em for a pack of brimstones: Oh my back!_ how now, Sir _Courtly_, said I, what the devil makes thee in this pickle? Oh, _gentlemen_, says he, I am glad to see you, but I am troubled with such a weakness in my back, that it makes me bend like a superannuated fornicator: some strain, said I, got in the other world with overheaving your self. What’s matter how ’twas got, says he, can you tell me any thing that’s good for’t? yes, said I, get a good warm _Girdle_ and tie round you, ’tis an excellent corroboratick to strengthen the loins; pox on you, says he, for a bantering dog how can a single girdle do me good, when a _Brace_ was my destruction? I think, said I, you did die a martyr for a pair of penetrable whiskers, fell a bleeding sacrifice to a cloven tuft, that was glad, I believe, of your going out of the other world, as old _Nic_ was of your coming into this, for I hear you kept the poor titmouse under such slavish subjection, that a peer of the realm, notwithstanding his honour, could not so much as come in to be brother-starling with you. Nay, some say you put an _Italian_ security upon’t, purposely to indict any body for felony and burglary that should break open the lock. Pox confound you, says he, for a lyar, how can that be, when half the pit knows they had egress and regress when they pleas’d without any manner of obstruction? but tattling here won’t do my business, I must seek out _Needham_, _Lower_, or some other famous physician that may give me ease; so gentlemen, adieu to ye.