_Nokes_, and this may serve as a lesson of instruction to you, that when once death has laid his icy paws upon us, all other distinctions of fortune and quality immediately vanish. These words were no sooner out of his mouth, but in came a formal old gentleman, and plucking a large wooden box from under his cloak, _Will you have any fine snuff_, gentlemen, _here is the finest snuff in the universe_, gentlemen; _a never failing remedy_, gentlemen, _against the megrims and head-ach_. And who do you take this worthy person to be? says Mr. _Nokes_, But that I am in this lower world, cry’d I, I durst swear ’tis the very individual quaker that sells his herb-snuff at the _Rainbow_ coffee-house. Damnably mistaken, says Mr. _Nokes_, before _George_, no less a man than the great _Cyrus_, the first founder of the _Persian_ monarchy. I was going to bless myself at this discovery, when a jolly red-nos’d woman in a straw-hat popt into the room, and in a shrill treble cry’d out, _Any buckles, combs or scissars_, gentlemen, _and tooth-picks, bottle-screws or twizers, silver buttons or tobacco-stoppers_, gentlemen; well now, my worthy friend, Mr. _Haines_, who do you think this to be? The Lord knows, reply’d I, for here are such an unaccountable choppings and changings among you that the Devil can’t tell what to make of ’em. Why then, in short, this is the virtuous _Thalestris_, Queen of the _Amazons_, the same numerical princess, that beat the hoof so many hundred leagues to get _Alexander_ the Great to administer his royal nipple to her. But _Jo._ since I find thee so affected at these alterations that have happen’d to persons who lived so many hundred years ago, I am resolv’d to shew thee some of a more modern date, and particularly of such as either thou wast acquainted with in the other world, or at lead hast often heard mention’d in company. So calling for the other glass of _Geneva_, he left a tester at the bar, and _Semiramis_, to shew her courtly breeding, dropp’d us abundance of curtesies, and paid us as much respect at our coming out, as your two-penny _French_ barbers in _Soho_ do to a gentleman that gives them a brace of odd half-pence above the original contract in their sign. [Illustration: _The Pall Mall of Brandipolis._ _Vol. II P. 7_ ]