Yet list to something still more pleasant. I'll tell you how, if you're but willing, From deepest fob t' extract a shilling. A present when desired to carry, If but a sorry pumpkin,--marry, Make as much fuss (or even greater) Than if it were a gold repeater; Send up your Master's strict commands To give it safe with your own hands. This to the purse-strings gives a shock, They can't but find out what's o'clock: In other words, they're wide awake, The money's yours, and no mistake! When your own Master gets the like, A brace of barbel, bream, or pike, Stir up his generosity To tip your friend a double fee; Go snacks then with your liveried brother, 'Good servants always help each other! All for our Master's truest glory, At least while _I_ may tell the story. When you 'step out' for tittle-tattle, A pot of ale,--a wench's prattle,-- To hear a street-professor sing,-- Or see a brother-footman swing, Leave the door open to save knocking, Or Master's nerves the slightest shocking: Say your young Lady for a cab sent, Or swear black's white,--you've ne'er been absent; Or, of belief to take a fresh hold, No, "never stirr'd from off the threshold!" 'Howsever,' if it's yet a lie, You have it still 'as cheap as I.' In all disputes with cabmen, chairmen, Act as if 'listed to be _their_ men. You "can't a-bear it, to be hard on Poor fellows, that can't spare a farden." Share in their woes, it ne'er can fail; Then share in foaming pots of ale. For all the world the greatest bore, That makes a Footman feel most sore, In winter burn, in summer shiv'ry, Is wearing that curst thing,--a livery! Choose, if you can, where some such queer one, Although a neither cheap nor dear one, May make you, from the thing you're wrapt in, To pass for some _outlandish Captain_. Put on fierce airs, 'tis sure to do, Stare all the people through and through; A foreign Count at least, not come short A man of 'great account' of some sort. Well, after all, man! never mind The scurvy jeers of all mankind; Keep up your spirits--quite the dandy, If only through your Master's brandy! Fortune, at times, makes her approach, man, Both to the Footman and the Coachman; Without a moment to consider, You've luck to marry a rich 'widder.' At noon your Lady calls the carriage, When least you dream of aught like marriage, Calls at a _Chapel_ by the way,-- You're up to what's the time of day! Bring home, _inside_, your lady wife, Thenceforth to have and hold--for life! Without such luck, or some preferment, To make an end, I make averment, Your post of honour is the Road, And longer not to be withstood. There's none dare venture the expression A Highwayman's a low profession; A short life and a merry one,