He set about with alacrity, a task which to some men would have been an awful preparation for the journey: his first business was to provide the repository; by the favour of the lord of the manor, he procured the dismembered limb of his favourite tree: this being done, he employed a Mr. Clear, a carpenter, to measure him for a coffin, and to make it out of this oak. Mr. Clear executed his job, and brought home his work, which was neatly pannelled, and highly rubbed and varnished with bees-wax. Mr. Day viewed his future habitation with the utmost serenity and philosophy, and addressing himself to the carpenter, said, “Mr. Clear, I have heard that when a person dies he is much stretched, and consequently much longer than when living,” and, punning upon the man’s name, went on, “now, Mr. Clear, it is not very CLEAR to me that you have made this coffin long enough, but, however, we’ll try;” and laying himself down in the coffin, he found it too short. “Never mind it,” says the Stoic, “you must desire my executors to cut off my head and put it between my legs.” His next care was the disposition of his estate, and in this instance, as well as in every action of his life, he demonstrated himself to be a just and honest man. After bequeathing several legacies, and providing for the children of his niece, as we have before observed, he carried his harmless oddities to the last action possible, and in that his mind shone with its wonted benignity. He directed his executors to convey his remains, by water, to Barking, accompanied by six journeymen pump and block-makers, as bearers; to each of whom he gave a new white leather apron and a guinea. There is a proof of his munificence that ought not to be omitted; it was his custom, upon the birth of all his niece’s children, to present the mother with a gold coral, a pap-boat, and a purse of 50 guineas. I appeal to those of my fair country-women who are mothers, whether such a gallant present would not be very pleasing to them upon such occasions; and I cannot dismiss this account without observing, that the poor were daily fed at his door, and never craved other relief from him in vain. Mr. Day was not one of those persons who left the grand account to be balanced at the hour of dissolution, or who have to trust only to a sick-bed repentance for the errors of their whole lives: he was a protestant, and a constant attendant upon divine worship at his parish church, and though he had no child of his own, he would always enforce the attendance of his nephews and nieces, their children, and of his servants. Mr. Day was not without his aversions, which were generally well founded and immoveable, but he had few resentments.