'Come trollops and slatterns,
Cockt hats and white aprons;
This best our modesty suits:
For why should not we
In a dress be as free
As Hogs-Norton squires in boots?'
and as this was not enough, got up a puppet-show of a sufficient
coarseness to suit the taste of the time, in which the practice of
wearing boots was satirized.
His next onslaught was upon that of carrying swords; and in this respect
Nash became a public benefactor, for in those days, though Chesterfield
was the writer on etiquette, people were not well-bred enough to keep
their tempers, and rivals for a lady's hand at a minuet, or gamblers who
disputed over their cards, invariably settled the matter by an option
between suicide or murder under the polite name of duel. The M.C. wisely
saw that these affairs would bring Bath in bad repute, and determined to
supplant the rapier by the less dangerous cane. In this he was for a
long time opposed, until a notorious torchlight duel between two
gamblers, of whom one was run through the body, and the other, to show
his contrition, turned Quaker, brought his opponents to a sense of the
danger of a weapon always at hand; and henceforth the sword was
abolished.
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