Madame Cresswell, a woman of infamous character, bequeathed ten pounds for a funeral sermon, in which nothing ill should be said of her. The Duke of Buckingham wrote the sermon, which was as follows: “All I shall say of her is this—she was born well, she married well, lived well, and died well; for she was born at Shad-well, married to Cress-well, lived at Clerken-well, and died in Bride-well.”
In 1835 John Howard Payne spent some time in the South and formed the acquaintance of a daughter of Judge Samuel Goode, of Montgomery, Alabama. An old autograph album of hers contains the following lines in Payne’s handwriting and over his signature:
“Lady, your name, if understood,
Explains your nature, to a letter;
And may you never change from Goode,
Unless, if possible, to better.”
On the next page is a response, written by Mirabeau B. Lamar, afterwards President of the “Lone Star Republic” of Texas. It runs as follows:
“I am content with being Goode;
To aim at better might be vain;
But if I do, ’tis understood,