Jack. I only wish’d to taste the stuffining.
Billy. And now you taste de carver knife instead! (Takes candle, and looks at supper). Vy, what him call dis?
Landlord. Why the turkey and the pie, to be sure.
Billy. De turkey and de pie! I tink you said de turkey and de pie,——what! de turkey widout de sassinger! him shock——him wouldn’t give pin for turkey widout dem——me like a de Alderman in chain.
Landlord. I’m very sorry, Mr. Waters, but——
Billy. You sorry!——I sorry for my supper, you damn dog, you serve up de turkey without de sassinger—no lemon to de weal—no hoyster saase to de rum’-steaks, who you tink eat rum’-steaks widout de hoyster saase? You send no filberts to de Port, nor debils to de Madery nather. Mee must use some other hot-hell—you dog.
However, by a combination of events, Billy became very poor, and was obliged, prior to his going into the workhouse, to part with his old friend, the fiddle.—“Him lend him ole fiddle to him uncle at de pop shop,” and the wooden pin (leg) which had so often supported Billy, would have shared the same fate, but its extensive service had rendered it worthless though it had twice saved poor Billy from the penalties of the Treadmill. At length, in the full belief that his spirit was about to flee to meet his coloured ancestors in the realms of bliss and a free hunting ground, he duly made his will, in which he bequeathed to W. Bodkin, Esq,—Billy Bodkin, the Hon. Sec. to the Mendicity Society: a bodkin that had so often pierced Billy to the heart—his wooden leg, earnestly desiring he might receive it in his latter end.
In life he had been accustomed to wear a military cocked hat, a judge’s full-bottomed cauliflower wig, and a naval officer’s jacket and trousers, symbolical of his being the head and arbiter of the naval, military, and judicial departments in his eleemosynary kingdom, these he bequeathed in the following manner: His wig he left to the Court of Chancery, in the vague hope that they might obtain with it a little of his decision in equity, and promptness in justice. His military hat he left to the Heads of the Horse Guards, and his naval jacket and trousers to the old washerwomen that manage the Greenwich Hospital. The Deal Fiddle, on which he had been used to scrape his native WOOD notes wild, we are happy to state, was taken out of lavender, and is now in the possession of the Tyburn Ketch and Glee Club—the duplicate having been bequeathed to them for that purpose.
In conclusion we have only to state, that Billy was an accomplished cadger, a skilful musician, and adroit dancer—doing more on one leg than many others on two, and possessed abilities that as an actor would have rendered him a shining ornament to the stage—“to hold, as t’were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own black image!”
