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JANET CLINKER’S ORATION. On the virtues of the Old Women, and the Pride of the Young.
The madness of this unmuzzled age has driven me to mountains of thoughts, and a continued meditation ; it is enough to make an auld wife rin red wud, and drive a body beyond the halter’s end of ill nature, to see what I see, and hear what I hear : Therefore the hinges of my anger are broke, and the bands of my good nature are burst in two, the door of civility is laid quite open, plain speech and mild admonition is of none effect ; nothing must be used row but thunder-bolts of reproach, tartly trimmed in a tantalizing stile, roughly redd up, and manufactured thro' an auld Matron’s mouth, who is indeed but frail in the teeth, but will squeeze surprisingly with her auld gums until her very chafr-blades crack in the crushing of your vice. I shall branch out my discourse into four heads. 1st. What I have seen, and been wit- ness to.
