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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=540312" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Everyday Characters II - Quince</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fallentis semita vit*. — Hor.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Near a small village in the West,<br>Where many very worthy people <br>Eat, drink, play whist, and do their best <br>To guard from evil Church and steeple. <br>There stood — alas! it stands no more! — <br>A tenement of brick and plaster, <br>Of which, for forty years and four, <br>My good friend Quince was lord and master.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Welcome was he in hut and hall <br>To maids and matrons, peers and peasants ; <br>He won the sympathies of all <br>By making puns, and making presents. <br>Though all the parish were at strife. <br>He kept his counsel, and his carriage, <br>He laughed, and loved a quiet life,<br>And shrank from Chancery suits — and marriage.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sound was his claret — and his head; <br>Warm was his double ale — and feelings; <br>His partners at the whist club said <br>That he was faultless in his dealings : <br>He went to church but once a week ; <br>Yet Dr. Poundtext always found him <br>An upright man, who studied Greek, <br>And liked to see his friends around him.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Asylums, hospitals and schools, <br>He used to swear, were made to cozen ; <br>All who subscribed to them were fools, — <br>And he subscribed to half-a-dozen : <br>It was his doctrine, that the poor <br>Were always able, never willing ; <br>And so the beggar at his door <br>Had first abuse, and then — a shilling. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some public principles he had, <br>But was no flatterer, nor fretter ; <br>He rapped his box when things were bad. <br>And said 'I cannot make them better!' <br>And much he loathed the patriot's snort, <br>And much he scorned the placeman's snuffle ; <br>And cut the fiercest quarrels short <br>With — ' ' Patience, gentlemen — and shuffle ! ' ' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For full ten years his pointer Speed <br>Had couched beneath her master's table ; <br>For twice ten years his old white steed <br>Had fattened in his master's stable ; <br>Old Quince averred, upon his troth, <br>They were the ugliest beasts in Devon ; <br>And none knew why he fed them both, <br>With his own hands, six days in seven. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Whene'er they heard his ring or knock. <br>Quicker than thought, the village slatterns <br>Flung down the novel, smoothed the frock, <br>And took up Mrs. Glasse, and patterns; <br>Adine was studying baker's bills ; <br>Louisa looked the queen of knitters ; <br>Jane happened to be hemming frills ; <br>And Bell, by chance, was making fritters. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But all was vain ; and while decay <br>Came, like a tranquil moonlight, o'er him. <br>And found him gouty still, and gay, <br>With no fair nurse to bless or bore him, <br>His rugged smile and easy chair, <br>His dread of matrimonial lectures, <br>His wig, his stick, his powdered hair. <br>Were themes for very strange conjectures. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some sages thought the stars above <br>Had crazed him with excess of knowledge; <br>Some heard he had been crost in love <br>Before he came away from College ; <br>Some darkly hinted that his Grace <br>Did nothing, great or small, without him ; <br>Some whispered, with a solemn face, <br>That there was 'something odd about him ! ' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I found him, at threescore and ten, <br>A single man, but bent quite double; <br>Sickness was coming on him then <br>To take him from a world of trouble : <br>He prosed of slipping down the hill. <br>Discovered he grew older daily ; <br>One frosty day he made his will, — <br>The next, he sent for Doctor Bailey. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And so he lived, — and so he died! — <br>When last I sat beside his pillow <br>He shook my hand, and 'Ah!' he cried, <br>'Penelope must wear the willow. <br>Tell her I hugged her rosy chain <br>While life was flickering in the socket; <br>And say, that when I call again, <br>I '11 bring a licence in my pocket. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I've left my house and grounds to Fag, — <br>I hope his master's shoes will suit him ; <br>And I've bequeathed to you my nag, <br>To feed him for my sake, — or shoot him, <br>The Vicar's wife will take old Fox, — <br>She '11 find him an uncommon mouser, - <br>And let her husband have my box, <br>My Bible, and my Assmanshauser. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">' Whether I ought to die or not. <br>My Doctors cannot quite determine ; <br>It 's only clear that I shall rot. <br>And be, like Priam, food for vermin. <br>My debts are paid : — but Nature's debt <br>Almost escaped my recollection : <br>Tom! — we shall meet again; — and yet <br>I cannot leave you my direction ! '</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Winthrop+Mackworth+Praed">Winthrop Mackworth Praed</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=540312" data-title="Everyday Characters II - Quince de Winthrop Mackworth Praed" data-description="Fallentis semita vit*. — Hor.


Near a small village in the West,
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..."></div>
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