Chap. VIII Of the Astonishing Transmigration of Miss Abigail Eviltongue Into the Body of a Serpent
In the next apartment we saw a large wire cage, in which the Bramin told us he had a bird which was something different from the common ones; and so indeed it was, for upon my eldest daughter’s going near to see it, she was startled by a large serpent which darted itself against the wires, and hissed and sissed as if it would have stung us all to death in an instant. It was however, a very beautiful creature of the kind, and as the sun then shone very bright, the golden and silver streaks upon its azure skin made a very splendid appearance. My youngest son wanting to go and stroke it;—“No, my pretty boy, said the good Bramin; if you have any value for yourself, you will always keep out of the reach of such creatures as these, and of all such who resemble the young lady by whose soul this serpent is animated. I say young lady, because the serpent before you is indeed animated by the soul of the late Miss Abigail Eviltongue. The family of the Eviltongue, (I dare say you have heard of them) is extremely numerous; for there are some, and indeed too many of them, in every town, and, I believe in every village in the country. Miss Abigail, the young lady I am speaking of, had as just a title to the name, and supported the character of her family with as much exactness as any one amongst them; for her tongue was remarkably active, and spared the reputation neither of friend nor foe. She was, it is true, a very handsome girl, and the charms of her person would have procured her many admirers if they had not been disgraced by her natural propensity to slander and defamation. In her very infancy, as soon as she could speak to be understood, she began with telling fibs of the servants, and very frequently of her brothers and sisters; for which, you may be certain, they all despised her very heartily. But as she was too much encouraged in this hateful practice by her parents, instead of being severely flogged for it, as she ought to have been, she set the frowns and sneers of the others at open defiance; and the more they resented her little malice the more eager she was to gratify it by loading them with all the falsehoods she was capable of inventing. In proportion as she grew older, this mischievous habit increased upon her; and when she was big enough to go a visiting, she indulged it abroad with as much freedom as she had been used to do at home; so that, in a short time, there was scarcely a young miss or master in the neighbourhood whose character she had not attempted to injure. What made her slanders the more odious was, that she generally vented them under a pretence of the greatest friendship and respect for the persons to whom she related them, and with great seeming pity for those whose reputation they were intended to destroy. She had likewise the malicious cunning to say many trifling things in praise of the objects of her censure; that by thus assuming an appearance of the strictest impartiality, and of the sincerest good nature, she might more easily gain credit to the bad things she said afterwards. By such artifices as these she frequently succeeded with the innocent and the unwary, and set one acquaintance and even one friend against another, without any sort of advantage to herself but the mere pleasure of making mischief. Another trick which she often employed for that purpose, was to examine into a young gentleman or lady’s constitutional foibles (for we all have some) and when she had discovered these, to go immediately to the person and tell him or her, that master or miss such a one had publickly ridiculed him for those very failings; by these means she was almost certain to be believed without any farther inquiry; for every one, even upon the slightest hint, will readily suspect that those things have been said of him, which he most wishes to be concealed, because he is conscious they are really true; he will seldom trouble himself to inquire into the veracity of the tale bearer, lest he should be reduced to the necessity of defending himself on his weakest side. For a similar reason, when Miss Abigail had a mind to flatter any person (which she frequently A man standing, facing a seated womanwould, to answer the purposes of her malice) she always commended him for those particular good qualities, or accomplishments which she knew he most valued himself for, or chiefly wished to have the credit of; because she was sensible that by this method she effectually retained his own vanity as her advocate for whatever she said afterwards. Nay, I have been informed by one who knew her perfectly well, that, young as she was, she sometimes carried her artifice so far as to begin a dispute with the person she intended to deceive, and after a little sharp altercation pro and con to flatter his vanity by gradually giving up the argument, and at last yielding him a victory, which gave him the more pleasure, because he thought it to be entirely owing to the invincible strength of his judgment. But she had another fault, which, if possible, was still more odious, than any of those already mentioned—viz. to revile and backbite those from whom she had received the greatest favours; for as she was too proud to own herself to be under obligations to any person, so to prevent others from taking notice of them, as she imagined to her disadvantage, she would represent every obligation she had received from her friends to Two standing women facing each otherbe either of the most trifling consequence, or to have been bestowed from selfish and despicable motives. Such was the temper and behaviour of Miss Abigail, who was a wretched complication of malice, low cunning and ingratitude: It is therefore no wonder that every person of sense and character was careful to avoid her company, and that she was detested by many, and despised even by those who wished her well. In short, the general contempt to which she had exposed herself, and the severe mortifications she met with from time to time, gave such killing wounds to her pride, that after pining and wasting away with shame and vexation for the space of several months, she at last broke her heart and gave up the ghost, in the seventeenth year of her age. After her death her contemptible soul was immediately hurried into the body of this venomous serpent, where it still retains its former malice and cunning.”—When the Bramin had finished his story, A woman standing by a canopy bed and a woman in the bedthe serpent, as if she understood and resented what had been said, writhed about and hissed at him as if she could have stung his eyes out.
We afterwards visited several other apartments, and saw a young tyger, a fox, a badger, &c. each of which was animated by the soul of some naughty child, who very nearly resembled him in temper. But as I have perhaps, already carried my treatise to such a length as will tire the eyes and the patience of my little readers, it is proper to bring it to a conclusion. I will, therefore, take my leave of them for the present, with observing that in one of the rooms we visited, we saw a pretty little parrot, in a gilt cage, who was perpetually talking, but did not understand the meaning of one single word he said. “This noisy bird, said the good Bramin, is inhabited by the soul of the late master Gabble, who was remarkable for two faults. He always spoke without thinking, and read a great deal with so little attention, that he made no farther improvement in knowledge than if he had never read at all. He devoured every thing, but digested nothing.” If any of my readers happen to be of the same disposition, they may survey the gilt covers of this little treatise with as much advantage as they will peruse the contents of it.
Finis