If there had been any beauty, grace, activity, magnificent dress,
or variety of any kind howsoever absurd, to engage the attention,
and amuse the fancy, I should not have been surprised; but there
was no such object: it was a tiresome repetition of the same
languid, frivolous scene, performed by actors that seemed to
sleep in all their motions. The continual swimming of these
phantoms before my eyes, gave me a swimming of the head; which
was also affected by the fouled air, circulating through such a
number of rotten human bellows. I therefore retreated towards the
door, and stood in the passage to the next room, talking to my
friend Quin; when an end being put to the minuets, the benches
were removed to make way for the country-dances; and the
multitude rising at once, the whole atmosphere was put in
commotion. Then, all of a sudden, came rushing upon me an
Egyptian gale, so impregnated with pestilential vapours, that my
nerves were overpowered, and I dropt senseless upon the floor.
You may easily conceive what a clamour and confusion this
accident must have produced, in such an assembly -- I soon
recovered, however, and found myself in an easy chair, supported
by my own people -- Sister Tabby, in her great tenderness, had put
me to the torture, squeezing my hand under her arm, and stuffing
my nose with spirit of hartshorn, till the whole inside was
excoriated.
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