HKB
which could be expected from persons that let lodgings in town to a gentleman, whom they esteemed the best tenant they ever had in their lives, or ever could have.
Immediately the tidings of the dumb gentleman's being returned home from beyond sea, spread throughout all the neighbourhood; and it was noised about from one neighbourhood to another, till it went through all ranks and conditions, and was known as well in a day or two's time, all the town over, as if he had been some great man belonging to the state, and his arrival had been notified to the public in the gazette, as a person of the last importance. And such a person he appeared indeed to be taken for, especially among the fair sex, who thronged to his doors, crowd after crowd, to consult with him about their future occurrences in life.
These curious tribes of people were as various in their persons, sex, age, quality, profession, art, trade, as they were in the curiosity of their minds, and the questions they had intended to propound to this dumb predictor of strange events, that lay yet as embryos in the womb of time, and were not to come, some of them, to a maturity for birth, for very many years after; just as porcelain clay is stored up in the earth by good artificers, which their heirs make china of, half a century, and sometimes more than an age, afterwards.
These shoals of customers, who were to fee him well for his advice, as we may suppose, now he stood in need of raising a fresh stock, were unquestionably as welcome and acceptable to him as they appeared too troublesome to him before, when he was in a state of more wealth and plenty.
Fortune, that does nothing moderately, seemed now resolved, as she had been extremely cruel before, to be extremely kind to him. He had nothing to do from early in the morning till late at night, but to read questions, and resolve them as fast as much-frequented doctors write their prescriptions and recipes, and like them also to receive fees as fast. Fortune was indeed mightily indulgent to the wants she had so suddenly reduced him to, and relieved him as suddenly by these knots of curiosos, who brought him a glut of money. But one single fair lady, that was one of his very first consulters after his return, and who had received satisfactory answers from him in other points, before he went abroad, proved, so good fortune would have it, worth all the rest of his customers together, as numerous as they were, and as I have accordingly represented them.