However, in a wicked world like this, where virtue was so exactly
counterfeited, and hypocrisy was generally successful, it would
be hard for him, a stranger, to escape censure. But indeed he
would submit to be considered a mountebank if he were discovered
to be one. Having made which statement, he proceeded to draw an
ingenious comparison between a mountebank and a politician,
suitable to all ages and dimes, but especially to this century
and country. Both, he intimated, are fain to supply the lack of
higher abilities to which they pretend, with craft; and attract
attention by undertaking strange things which can never be
performed. By both the people are pleased and deluded; the
expectation of good in the future drawing their eyes from the
certainty of evil in the present.
The sage Alexander Bendo then discoursed of miraculous cures
which he could effect, but he would set down no word in his bill
which bore an unclean sound. It was enough that he made himself
understood, but indeed he had seen physicians' bills containing
things of which no man who walked warily before God could
approve. Concerning astrological predictions, physiognomy,
divination by dreams, and otherwise, he would say, if it did not
look like ostentation, he had seldom failed, but had often been
of service; and to those who came to him he would guarantee
satisfaction. Nor would he be ashamed to avow his willingness to
practise rare secrets, for the help, conservation, and
augmentation of beauty and comeliness; an endowment granted for
the better establishment of mutual love between man and woman,
and as such highly valuable to both.
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