what appetites they had, yet would waste nothing, but picked every one his bone properly clean (which did satisfy me nothing was amiss with our geese), and great cheering when the puddings and flapdragons came in all aflame, and all as merry as grigsflinging of lighted plums at each other, but most mannerly not to fling any at Moll or us.

He could not have much charity for the most generous opponents; he certainly had none at all for those who (as he said) printed malicious and lying pamphlets against him "almost every morning," in which he found himself saluted as a "nest of perfidious vipers," "a night-flying dragon prince," "a flapdragon," "a caterpillar," "a spider," and "a butterbox.