HEADS AND TALES, FOR THE WISE AND WAGGISH; POETICAL SELECTIONS. PAUL CHATFIELD, M.D. JEFFERSON SAUNDERS, Esq. "Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem."-HORACE. VOL. I. LONDON: PRINTED FOR WHITTAKER & Co. AVE MARIA LANE. INTRODUCTION. BY THE EDITOR. To say that my deceased friend had always been an eccentric creature, a humourist, an oddity, will scarcely be received as a sufficient explanation of the quaint title which he has thought proper to affix to his work, and for which, therefore, I feel it my first duty as an Editor, to account. After the death of his wife, and, subsequently, of his only child, to both of whom he had been most tenderly attached, Dr. Chatfield sought relief from sorrow by frequent changes of scene, and found such alleviation of mind in wandering over the wilder and least frequented districts of the north of England, as well as such an expanded field for the exercise of his philanthropy, the ruling passion of his soul, that he formed the Quixotic resolution of abandoning his regular professional pursuits, then highly profitable, and of exercising them gratuitously for the benefit of such remote and forlorn objects, as he might encounter in that erratic life which he had now determined on adopting. Born in Yorkshire, and well acquainted with its loneliest recesses, experience had convinced him that there were many remote hamlets, as well as solitary hovels of wood and turf-cutters, charcoal burners, and other peasants, where much sickness and suffering were endured, either from local difficulties, or from pecuniary inability to employ even a village practitioner. To this class of indigent and obscure sufferers, whom he visited in regular periodical excursions, he devoted, for several years, his eminent professional skill, his time, his cheerful powers of consolation, and no small portion of his fortune, (which, since his retirement from productive practice, was restricted to rather less than five hundred a-year,) with a zeal, perseverance, and success, utterly unparalleled, as I verily believe, except in the wonders of charity, accomplished with a similar income, by the celebrated Man of Ross. For the sake of his own health, which was now occasionally impaired, as well as for the purpose of meeting a circle of cherished friends, who usually betook themselves to Harrowgate during the season, the Doctor made that place his head-quarters for a portion of every summer. Upon one of these visits he established a little society, which met weekly at his lodgings, under the name of "The Tea Party," to |