Lancaster gazette. [volume] (Lancaster, Mass.) 1828-1830, 1829-06-09
From the Nelr Monthly Magazine.
AN EVERY DAY CHARACTER.


Where many very worthy people
Eat, drink, play whist, and do their best
To guard from evil Church and Steeple.
There stood,-alas it stands no more =
A tenement of brick and plaster,
OF which, for forty years and four,
My good friend Ounce was lord and master
Welcome was he, in hut and hall,
To maids and matrons, peers and peasants,
He won the sympathies of all
BY making puns, and making presents:
Though all the Parish We're at strife,
He kept his counsel, and his carriage,
And laugh'd and loved quiet life,
And shrank from Chancery suits and marriage
Sound was his claret and his head;
Warm was his double ale, and feelings,
His partners at the whist club said,
That he was faultless in his dealings
He went to Church but once week;
Yet DR.. Prondtext always found him
An upright man, who studied Greek,
And liked to see his friends around him.
Asylums, Hospitals, and Schools,
He used to swear were made to cozen;
All who subscribed to them were fools,
And he subscribed to half dozen;
1t was his doctrine that the poor
Were always able, never willing;
And so the beggar at his door.
Had first abuse, and then shilling.
Some public principles he had,
But was no fatterer nor fretter,
He rapid his box when things were bad,
And said, /" cannot make them better"
And much he loath'd the patriots snort,
And much he scorn'd the placeman's shuttle
And cut the fercest quarrels short,
With g Patience, gentlemen, and shuttle"
For full ten years his pointer, Speed,
Had couch'd beneath her masters table;
For twice ten years his old white steed
Had fatten'd in his masters stable
Old Ounce averr'd, upon his troth,
They were the ugliest beasts in Devon;
And none knew why he fed them both,
With his own hands, six days in seven.
Whenever they heard his ring or knock,
Quicker than thought, the village slatterns
Flung down the novel, snooth'd the frock.
And took up Mrs. Glasse, and patterns;
Adline was studying bakers bills;
Louisa look'd the queen of kntters;
Jane happen'd to be hemming frills;
And Bell, by chance, was making fritters.
But all was vain and while Decay
Came like tranquil moonlight DER him,
And found him equity still, and gay,
With no fair Nurse to bless or bore him;
His rugged smile, and easy chair,
His dread of matrimonial lectures,
His wig, his stick, his powdered hair,
Were themes for very strange conjectures.
Some sages thought the stars above
Had crazed him with excess of knowledge;
Some heard he had been crossed in love,
Before he came away from College
Some darkly limited, that his Grace
Did nothing, great or small, without him,
Some whispered with solemn face,
That there was something odd about him!
l found him at threescore and ten,
A single man, but bent quite double;
Sickness was coming on him then,
To take him from world of trouble
He prosed ofsEpping down the hill,
Discovered he grew older daily;
One frosty day he made his will, -
The next he sent for DR.. Bailey.
And so he lived-and so he died -
When last sat beside his pillow,
He shook my hand" All ~ he cried,
" Penelope must wear the willow.
Tell her Ihuggd her rosy chain
While life was Pickering in the socket;
And say, that when call again,
ON bring license in my pocket.
I've left my house and grounds to Fag--
Il hope his masters shoes will suit him
And I've bequeathed to you my nag,
To feed him for my sake-or shoot him.
The Wears wife will take old Fox
She'll find him an uncommon mouser -
And let her husband have my box,
My Bible, and my Assmanshaussr.
= whether ought to die or not
MY doctors cannot quite determine
It's only clear that shall rot,
And be, like Priam, food for vermin
my debts are paid but natures debt
Almost escapedmy recollection =
Tom I'VE shall meet again land yet
] cannot leave Won INV direction ~