“Dear Messrs. Tippens, what is fear’d by you,
Alas! the melancholy circumstance is true,
That I am dead; and, more afflicting still,
My legal assets cannot pay your bill.
To think of this, I am almost broken hearted,
Insolvent I, this earthly life departed;
Dear Messrs. T., I am yours without a farthing,
For executors and self,George Hardinge.”
The manner of her death was thus,
She was druv over by a Bus.
Here lies Martha wife of Hugh,
Born at St Ansell’s, buried at Kew,
Children in wedlock they had five,
Three are dead & two are alive,
Those who are living had much rather
Die with the Mother than live with the Father.
“The Body
of
Benjamin Franklin, Printer,
(like the cover of an old book,
its contents torn out,
and stripped of its lettering and gilding),
lies here, food for worms;
yet the work itself shall not be lost;
for it will, as he believed, appear once more
in a new and more beautiful edition,
corrected and amended
by
The Author!”
Singular Epitaph.
Careless and thoughtless all my life,
Stranger to every source of strife,
And deeming each grave sage a fool,
The law of nature was my rule.
By which I learnt to duly measure
My portion of desire and pleasure.
’Tis strange that here I lie you see,
For death must have indulged a whim,
At any time t’ have thought of me,
Who never once did think of him.
Here lies James Earle the Pugilist, who on the 11th of April 1788 gave in.
She lived genteely on a small income.
Epitaph on a Gamester.