“In this one room his dame you never saw, Where reigned by custom old a Salic law; Here coatless lolled he on his throne of oak, And every tongue paused midway if he spoke. Due mirth he loved, yet was his sway severe; No blear-eyed driveller got his stagger here; 'Measure was happiness; who wanted more, Must buy his ruin at the Deacon’s store;' None but his lodgers after ten could stay, Nor after nine on eves of Sabbath-day. He had his favorites and his pensioners, The same that gypsy Nature owns for hers: Loose-ended souls, whose skills bring scanty gold, And whom the poor-house catches when they ’re old; Rude country-minstrels, men who doctor kine, Or graft, and, out of scions ten, save nine; Creatures of genius they, but never meant To keep step with the civic regiment. These Ezra welcomed, feeling in his mind Perhaps some motions of the vagrant kind; These paid no money, yet for them he drew Special Jamaica from a tap they knew, And, for their feelings, chalked behind the door With solemn face a visionary score. This thawed to life in Uncle Reuben’s throat A torpid shoal of jest and anecdote, Like those queer fish that doze the droughts away, And wait for moisture, wrapt in sun-baked clay; This warmed the one-eyed fiddler to his task, Perched in the corner on an empty cask, By whose shrill art rapt suddenly, some boor Rattled a double-shuffle on the floor; 'Hull’s Victory' was, indeed, the favorite air, Though 'Yankee Doodle' claimed its proper share. “'Twas there I caught from Uncle Reuben’s lips, In dribbling monologue ’twixt whiffs and sips, The story I so long have tried to tell; The humor coarse, the persons common,--well, From Nature only do I love to paint, Whether she send a satyr or a saint; To me Sincerity’s the one thing good, Soiled though she be and lost to maidenhood. Quompegan is a town some ten miles south From Jethro, at Nagumscot river-mouth, A seaport town, and makes its title good With lumber and dried fish and eastern wood. Here Deacon Bitters dwelt and kept the Store, The richest man for many a mile of shore; In little less than everything dealt he, From meeting-houses to a chest of tea; So dextrous therewithal a flint to skin, He could make profit on a single pin; In business strict, to bring the balance true He had been known to bite a fig in two, And change a board-nail for a shingle-nail. All that he had he ready held for sale, His house, his tomb, whate’er the law allows, And he had gladly parted with his spouse. His one ambition still to get and get, He would arrest your very ghost for debt. His store looked righteous, should the Parson come, But in a dark back-room he peddled rum, And eased Ma’am Conscience, if she e’er would scold, By christening it with water ere he sold. A small, dry man he was, who wore a queue, And one white neckcloth all the week-days through,-- On Monday white, by Saturday as dun As that worn homeward by the prodigal son. His frosted earlocks, striped with foxy brown,