MISTER KEAZLE’S EPITAPH
Foster the tinker traversed Maine
From Elkins town to Kittery Point,
With a rattling pack and a rattling brain,
And a general air of “out of joint.”
A gaunt old chap with a shambling gait,
A battered hat, and rusty clothes,
With grimy digits in sorry state,
And a smooch on the end of his big red nose.
That was the way that Foster went,
—Mixture of shrewdness and folly blent,
Mending the pots and the pans as ordered,
But leaving the leak in his nob unsoldered.
But Foster the tinker was no one’s fool;
He fired an answer every time.
’Twas either a saw or proverb or rule,
Or else a bit of home-made rhyme.
And while he knocked at a pot or a pan
And puffed the coals of his little blaze,
He was ready and primed for the jocose man
Who thought that the tinker was easy to
phase.
It chanced that Foster stopped one night
With a man who thought a master sight
Of being esteemed as smart’s a weasel
—Man by the name of Obed Keazle.
And he pronged at Foster the evening through
While the folks were having a merry laugh;
And they laughed the most when he said, “Now
you
Compose me a good nice epitaph,
And your lodging here shan’t cost a cent.”
So Foster snapped at the chance and said
He would have it ready before he went,
And would make one verse ere they went to
bed.
So Keazle listened with deep delight
While he heard the guileless chap recite,
With his head a-cock like a huge canary,
This sample of his obituary:
Thus he begun
Verse number one:
“A man there was who died of late,
Whom angels did impatient wait,
With outstretched arms and smiles of love
To bear him to the Realms Above.”
Foster the tinker slept that night
On a feather tick that was three feet thick,
And Keazle attended in calm delight
To warm the bed with a nice hot brick.
And the tinker sat at the breakfast board
And blandly smiled and ate and ate,
Then piled on his back his motley hoard
And took his stand at the front yard gate.
He said, “I’ll give ye the other half
Of that strictly fust-class epitaph.”
There are doubts you know as to how it
suited,
But the tinker didn’t wait—he scooted.
For thus ran—whew!
Verse number two:
While angels hovered in the skies
Disputing who should bear the prize,
In slipped the devil like a weasel
And Down Below he kicked old Keazle.”