“There would be some comfort, sir,” he continued, “if one could go on writing at will like that. As it is, I sometimes write verses all over a slate, and rub them out again. Live hard! yes, indeed, we do live hard. I hardly know the taste of meat. We live on bread and butter, and tea; no, not any fish. As you see, sir, I work at tinning. I put new bottoms into old tin tea-pots, and such like. Here’s my sort of bench, by my poor bit of a bed. In the best weeks I earn 4s. by tinning, never higher. In bad weeks I earn only 1s. by it, and sometimes not that,—and there are more shilling than four shilling weeks by three to one. As to my poetry, a good week is 3s., and a poor week is 1s.—and sometimes I make nothing at all that way. So I leave you to judge, sir, whether we live hard; for the comings in, and what we have from the parish, must keep six of us—myself, my wife, and four children. It’s a long, hard struggle.” “Yes, indeed,” said the wife, “it’s just as you’ve heard my husband tell, sir. We’ve 2s. a week and four loaves of bread from the parish, and the rent’s 2s. 6d., and the landlord every week has 2s.,—and 6d. he has done for him in tinning work. Oh, we do live hard, indeed.”
As I was taking my leave, the poor man expressed a desire that I would take a copy of an epitaph which he had written for himself. “If ever,” he said, “I am rich enough to provide for a tomb-stone, or my family is rich enough to give me one, this shall be my epitaph” [I copied it from a blank page in his Bible:]
“Stranger, pause, a moment stay,
Tread lightly o’er this mound of clay.
Here lies J—— H——, in hopes to rise,
And meet his Saviour in the skies.
Christ his refuge, Heaven his home,
Where pain and sorrow never come.
His journey’s done, his trouble’s past,
With God he sleeps in peace at last.”