Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) [Illustration] THE TAILOR OF GLOUCESTER BY BEATRIX POTTER _Author of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit," etc_ "I'LL BE AT CHARGES FOR A LOOKING-GLASS, AND ENTERTAIN A SCORE OR TWO OF TAILORS" _Richard III_ NEW YORK FREDERICK WARNE & CO, INC COPYRIGHT, 1903 BY FREDERICK WARNE & Co. COPYRIGHT RENEWED, 1931 [_All rights reserved_] PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. BY PRINCETON POLYCHROME PRESS ISBN O 7232 0594 9 (cloth) ISBN O-7232-6227-6 (paper) 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20(C) F/ _MY DEAR FREDA,_ _Because you are fond of fairy-tales, and have been ill, I have made you a story all for yourself--a new one that nobody has read before._ _And the queerest thing about it is--that I heard it in Gloucestershire, and that it is true--at least about the tailor, the waistcoat, and the_ _"No more twist!"_ _Christmas, 1901_ [Illustration] THE TAILOR OF GLOUCESTER In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets--when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta--there lived a tailor in Gloucester. He sat in the window of a little shop in Westgate Street, cross-legged on a table, from morning till dark. All day long while the light lasted he sewed and snippeted, piecing out his satin and pompadour, and lutestring; stuffs had strange names, and were very expensive in the days of the Tailor of Gloucester. But although he sewed fine silk for his neighbours, he himself was very, very poor--a little old man in spectacles, with a pinched face, old crooked fingers, and a suit of thread-bare clothes. He cut his coats without waste, according to his embroidered cloth; they were very small ends and snippets that lay about upon the table--"Too narrow breadths for nought--except waistcoats for mice," said the tailor. [Illustration] One bitter cold day near Christmastime the tailor began to make a coat--a coat of cherry-coloured corded silk embroidered with pansies and roses, and a cream coloured satin waistcoat--trimmed with gauze and green worsted chenille--for the Mayor of Gloucester. [Illustration] The tailor worked and worked, and he talked to himself. He measured the silk, and turned it round and round, and trimmed it into shape with his shears; the table was all littered with cherry-coloured snippets. "No breadth at all, and cut on the cross; it is no breadth at all; tippets for mice and ribbons for mobs! for mice!" said the Tailor of Gloucester. When the snow-flakes came down against the small leaded window-panes and shut out the light, the tailor had done his day's work; all the silk and satin lay cut out upon the table. [Illustration]