Death.
My goody, 'tis too late to-day,
Time's moving on, and will not stay;
But be at rest and save your sorrow,
The cart will call again to-morrow.
Plate 23. The Undertaker and the Quack.
The doctor's sick'ning toil to close,
'Recipe coffin' is the dose.
A prosperous quack practitioner, meditating over his specific sovereign pill to cure all ills, is riding gravely through the streets of a picturesque country town. As his hack is passing Screwtight the undertaker's window, that worthy is thrown into consternation, for he recognises, immovably perched behind the cogitating empiric, the figure of a grim rider with whose presence he is too professionally familiar to be deceived.
And leaping on the doctor's hack,
Sat close and snugly at his back;
And as they reach'd Ned Screwtight's door,
Death sneez'd—and Nostrum was no more.
The undertaker is plunged into sincere mourning for the loss of his great patron; his less far-seeing wife declares he ought to rejoice at his good fortune, since there's the job of burying the deceased doctor.
Screwtight hung down his head and sigh'd:
'You foolish woman,' he replied,
'Old Nostrum there stretch'd on the ground
Was the best friend I ever found.
The good man lies upon his back,
And trade will now be very slack.
How shall we undertakers thrive,
With doctors who keep folks alive?
You talk of jobs; I swear 'tis true,
I'd sooner do the job for you.
We've cause to grieve, say what you will,
For when quacks die, they cease to kill.'
Plate 24. The Masquerade.