Page:Fun upon fun, or, The comical and merry tricks of Leper the tailor (2).pdf/14

14 are as beastly minded; if we do not work we get nothing to eat; yet we are always eating and always freting; 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 fulness, if it were so, but the test of our benefactors are not worthy the acknowledging:hey, Amen.' The gentleman laughed till his sides were like to burst, and gave Leper half-a-crown to drink.

Leper was not long done with his apprenticeship till he set up for himself, and got a journeyman and an apprentice, was coming into very good business, and had he restrained his roguish tricks, he might have done very well. He and his lads being employed to work in a farmer's house, where the housewife was a great miser, and not very cleanly in making meat, and sneevled through her nose greatly when she spoke.—In the morning, when she went to make their pottage, she made a fashion of washing the pot, which to appearance seemed to him to have been amongst the first that had been made; then she set it before the fire till she went to the well, in which time Leper looking into it, sees two great holes stapped with clouts, he taks up his goose, and holds it as high as his head, then lets it drop into the pot,