25. After about half an hour's pause, she told him that she had been playing at crimp: upon which _Rhadamanthus_ beckoned to the keeper on his left hand, to take her into custody. And you, Madam, says the judge, that look with such a soft and languishing air; I think you set out for this place in your nine and twentieth year; what have you been doing all this while? I had a great deal of business on my hands, says she, being taken up the first twelve years of my life, in dressing a jointed baby, and all the remaining part of it in reading plays and romances.
26. Very well, says he, you have employed your time to good purpose. Away with her. The next was a plain country woman: Well, mistress, says _Rhadamanthus_, and what have you been doing? An't please your worship, says she, I did not live quite forty years; and in that time brought my husband seven daughters, made him nine thousand cheeses, and left my eldest girl with him to look after his house in my absence, and who, I may venture to say, is us pretty a housewife as any in the country.
27. _Rhadamanthus_ smiled at the simplicity of the good woman, and ordered the keeper of _Elysium_, to take her into his care. And you, fair lady, says he, what have you been doing these five and thirty years? I have been doing no hurt, I assure you sir, said she. That is well, says he, but what good have you been doing? The lady was in great confusion at this question, and not knowing what to answer, the two keepers leaped out to seize her at the same time; the one took her by the hand to convey her to _Elysium_; the other caught hold of her to carry her away to _Erebus_.
28. But _Rhadamanthus_ observing an ingenuous modesty in her countenance and behaviour, bid them both let her loose, and set her aside for a re-examination when he was more at leisure. An old woman, of a proud and sour look, presented herself next at the bar, and being asked what she had been doing? Truly, says she, I lived three score and ten years in a very wicked world, and was so angry at the behaviour of a parcel of young flirts, that I past most of my last years in condemning the follies of the times.
29. I was every day blaming the silly conduct of people about me, in order to deter those I conversed with from falling into the like errors and miscarriages. Very well, says _Rhadamanthus_, but did you keep the same watchful eye over your own actions? Why truly, says she, I was so taken up with publishing the faults of others, that I had no time to consider my own.