Page:Fun upon fun, or, The comical and merry tricks of Leper the tailor (2).pdf/13

13 when she fell to her bottle, taking two or three hearty gluts, then she roars out murder. I'm poisoned, I'm poisoned. Bocking and purging began, and the neighbours were called in; she leaves her blood upon poor Leper, and tells how such an honest woman brought her ae bottle as another was done, and the murdering loon had stolen it, and put in a bottle of poison instead of it. Leper took to his heels, but 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 of 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 over hear him, as follows:—'Och, hoch! we are a parcel of poor beastly bodies, and we