Nay, _Sir_, since you are so peremptory and all that, I have sent you my last conclusive answer, and am resolv’d to be plagu’d with you no longer. Hoping therefore that your worship is in good health, as your humble servant is at this present writing, this comes to let you know (nay don’t startle, I beseech you) that I am fairly and honestly dead (oh! fy, Sir, why should you be discompos’d at so small a matter as that is) in short, dead to all intents and purposes as a door-nail; or if that won’t serve your turn, as dead as _Methusalah_, or any of the patriarchs before the flood. And because, Sir, I am in a very good humour at present, and somewhat dispos’d to be merry (which you’ll say is somewhat odd in a dead man) and besides having a mighty respect for a person of your worth and gravity, I will let you know what distemper I dy’d of, and give you the whole history of my illness from _Dan_ to _Beersheba_. Upon the _20th_ of _July_ last, old stile, I was invited to a christning in a certain village in _Lincolnshire_, where I had the honour of being vicar; and by a strange fatality was over-persuaded to eat some custard, which is the most pernicious aliment in the world, but especially in the dog-days. Since I have been in the _Elysian Fields_, meeting with _Galen_ and _Dioscorides_ the other day, I told them my case, and both of ’em told me that custard had done my business. _Galen_ whisper’d me in the ear, and told me that whatever sham stories the historians had palm’d upon the world _Trajan_ got his death by nothing but eating of custard at _Antioch_, and mention’d two or three other eminent persons that had their heels tript up by that pernicious food. _Dioscorides_ added farther, that custard was destructive of the intellect, and conjur’d me that the next time I writ to any of my acquaintance in _London_, I would desire them to present his most humble service to my _Lord Mayor_ and court of _Aldermen_, and advise ’em as from him to refrain from custard, because it obnubilated the understanding, and was detrimental to the memory. So much by way of digression, but now, Sir, to proceed in the history of my illness: this eating of custard first of all gave me a cachexy, and ’twas my misfortune that there was no brandy to be had in the house, for in all probability a cogue of true orthodox _Nantz_, would have corrected the crudity of the custard. This cachexy in twelve hours turn’d to a _Dolor alvi_, that to a _Peripneumonia_ in the _Diaphragm_, and that to an _Epyema_ in the _Glandula Pinealis_. Upon this a hundred other distempers came pouring upon me like thunder and lightning, for you know when a man is once going, _down with him_ is the word; that very fairly dispatch’d me in four days, and so I dy’d without a doctor to help to dispatch me, or an attorney to make my will. A little before I troop’d off, I desir’d my parishoners to bury me under the great church-spout which accordingly they did, I thank ’em for’t, and upon every shower of