Tell her, whose goodness is my bane,
Whose looks have smil’d my peace away,
Oh! whisper how she gives me pain,
Whilst undesigning, frank, and gay.
’Tis not for common charms I sigh,
For what the vulgar, beauty call;
’Tis not a cheek, a lip, an eye,
But ’tis the soul that lights them all.
For that I drop the tender tear,
For that I make this artless moan;
Oh! sigh it, Love, into her ear,
And make the bashful lover known.
In the hope that the present may draw forth further reliquiæ of the poet of the “Seasons” in your excellent publication, I beg leave to subscribe myself,
Sir, &c.
Will O’ The Wisp.
Sept. 17, 1827.
THE BERKSHIRE MISER.
The economy and parsimony of the Rev. Morgan Jones, late curate of Blewbury, a parish about six miles from Wallingford, were almost beyond credibility; he having outdone, in many instances, the celebrated Elwes, of Marcham.
For many of the last years of Mr. Jones’s ministerial labours, he had no servant to attend any of his domestic concerns; and he never had even the assistance of a female within his doors for the last twelve years. The offices of housemaid, chamber-maid, cook, and scullion, and even most part of his washing and mending, were performed by himself; he was frequently known to beg needles and thread at some of the farm-houses, to tack together his tattered garments, at which, from practice, he had become very expert. He was curate of Blewbury upwards of forty-three years; and the same hat and coat served him for his every-day dress during the whole of that period. The brim of his hat had, on one side, (by much handling,) been worn off quite to the crown, but on coming one day from the hamlet of Upton across the fields, he luckily met with an old left-off hat, stuck up for a scarecrow. He immediately secured the prize, and with some tar-twine, substituted as thread, and a piece of the brim, quite repaired the deficiencies of his beloved old one, and ever after wore it in common, although the old one was of a russet brown, and the new brim nearly as black as jet. His coat, when he first came from Ashton Keyns in 1781, was a surtout much the worse for wear; after some time he had it turned inside out, and made up into a common one. Whenever it became rent or torn, it was as speedily tacked together with his own hands: at length pieces fell out and were lost, and, as he found it necessary, he cut pieces off the tail to make good the upper part, until the coat was reduced to a jacket, stuck about with patches of his own applying. In this hat and coat, when at home on working days, he was constantly decorated, but he never wore it abroad or before strangers, except he forgot himself, as he several times had been much vexed at the ridicule his grotesque appearance had excited when seen by those with whom he was not much acquainted. This extraordinary coat (or more properly jacket) is now in the possession of one of the parishioners, and prized as a curiosity. His stockings were washed and mended by himself, and some of them had scarcely a vestige of the original worsted. He had a great store of new shirts, which had never been worn, but for many years his stock became reduced to one in use; his parsimony would not permit him to have this washed more than once in two or three months, for which he reluctantly paid a poor woman fourpence. He always slept without his shirt, that it might not want washing too often, and by that means be worn out; and he always went without one while it was washed, and very frequently at other times. This solitary shirt he mended himself, and as fast as it required to be patched in the body he ingeniously supplied it by cutting off the tail; but, as nothing will last for ever, by this constant clipping it unfortunately became too short to reach down his small-clothes. This, of course, was a sad disaster, and there was some fear least one of the new ones must be brought into use; but, after a diligent search, he fortunately found in one of his drawers the top part of a shirt with a frill on, which had probably lain by ever since his youthful and more gay days. This with his usual sagacity, he tacked on, to the tail of the old one, with the frill downwards, and it was thus worn until the day before he left Blewbury. Latterly his memory became impaired. He several times forgot to change his dress, and was more than once seen at the burial of a corpse dressed in this ludicrous and curious manner, with scarcely a button on any part of his clothes, but tied together in various parts with string. In this state he was by strangers mistaken for a beggar, and barely escaped being offered their charity.