Page:Fun upon fun, or, Leper the tailor (1).pdf/14

 was pursued and carried before a Justice of the Peace, where he told all he had done, which made the Justice laugh heartily at the joke; and the tailor's wife was well purged from her feigned sickness, laziness, and cursed ill nature; for always when she began to curl her nose, for the future, the tailor had no more to say, but Maggy, mind the bottle.'

Leper was working with a master-tailor in Glasgow, who hungered his men; and one morning, just when breakfast was set on the table, in comes a gentleman to try on a suit a clothes. The master being obliged to rise, desired the lads to say the grace themselves. Every one refused it, and put it to his neighbour, till Leper undertook it, and said with an audible voice, that the stranger gentleman might overhear him, as follows:-'Och, hoch! we are a parcel of poor beastly bodies, and beastly minded, if we do not work we get nothing to eat; yet, we are always eating and always fretting; singing and half-starving is like to be our fortune; scartings and scrapings are the most of our mouthfuls, We would fain thank Thee, for our benefactors are not worthy the acknowledging: hey. Amen,' The gentleman laughed till