Character Index | Proverb Index
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| Character Index | Proverb Index |
L'Estrange version
Jupiter appointed Mercury to make him a composition of fraud and hypocrisie, and to give every artifices his dose on't. The medicine was prepar'd according to the bill, and the proportions duly observ'd, and divided: only there was a great deal too much of it made, and the overplus remain'd still in the morter. Upon examining the whole account, there was a mistake it seems, in the reck'ning; for the taylors were forgott'n in the catalogue: so that Mercury, for brevity sake, gave the taylors the whole quantity that was left; and from hence comes the old saying: There's knavery in all trades, but most in taylors.
Moral
It is in some sort natural to be a knave. We were made so, in the very composition of our flesh and blood; only fraud is call'd wit in one case, good husbandry in another, &c., while 'tis the whole bus'ness of the world for one man to couzen another.
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Tom Simondi, All Rights Reserved