Page:The Ingoldsby Legends (Frowde, 1905).pdf/429

 3tin. Look well to your Maid-servants!-say you expect them To see to the children, and not to neglect them! And if you're a widower, just throw a cursory Glance in, at times, when you go near the Nursery. -Perhaps it's as well to keep children from plums, And from pears in the season, and sucking their thumbs! 4. To sum up the whole with a 'Saw of much use, Be just and be generous,-don't be profuse!- Pay the debts that you owe,-keep your word to your friends, But DON'T SET YOUR CANDLES ALIGHT AT BOTH ENDS! !-- For of this be assured, if you go it' too fast, You'll be 'dish'd like Sir Guy, And like him, perhaps, dio A poor, old, half-starved, Country Parson at last! From a scal attached to an ancient deed penes Thomas Ingoldsby, Esq. preserved in the ar- chives at Tappington Everard.



For the Legend that follows Father John has, it will be seen, the grave authority of a Romish Prelate. The good Father, who, as I have before had occasion to remark, received his education at Douai, speut several years, in the earlier part of his life, upon the Continent. I have no doubt but that during this period he visited Blois, and there, in all probability, picked up, in the very scene of its locality, the history which he has thus recorded.