Memoirs of an Old Wig
by Fenton (Richard) (9780217019958)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: largest magnifier I used in decyphering my medals and coins, n the outer piece was inscribed " MY OWN HISTORY." I fell to with avidity.?It began thus: ? We have had vocal forests from my old quaint friend James Howel, and since his time, vocal libraries, sofas, pulpits, and their velvet cushions. With how much greater reason might a wig become vocal, and acquire the gift of tongues, which had been for many years almost incorporated with the sensorium ? I shall therefore say no more by way of preface, or apology for the account I shall now give of myself, which, as I deduce my origin from one who was recorded in the Tyburn Chronicle of the day, I may be allowed to call?" My " birth, parentage, and education." Though perhaps I have but few of the original hairs of the ancestor I sprang from, so changed, coloured, and intermarried have they been, yet I stillam induced to trace my pedigree, and have as much right to do so, as many a Welsh esquire, who affects to trace to Gomer, lineally, collaterally, and every way that can lead to the plains of Shinar, yet whose family card, like a beggar's coat, is so pieced, patched, and diversified, that no one can point out the original web or colour it was of. And though, like him, 1 may have some unproductive or rotten branches in my family, I will candidly note them; and not do as flattering genealogists, who, if they note them at all, throw all that is disgraceful into Latin; such as Coll: sus? stuprata for the ladies, Sutor vestiarius erat,, andc. andc. I first had the honour of growing on the head of one who was hanged for horse stealing, at the advanced age of seventy-eight, when he was become grey headed, but not the least bald, having a load of hair rarely seen at any age; and who was so little affected by the ...

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