right eye. His fpirits, however, were so much depreffed on the occafion, that it was fome time before he could be brought to hold up his head. He presently got the better of any perfonal inconvenience, or disappointment, and even chearfulfully paid the bill for the dinner at Edmonton, though no ufe had been made of it. These were things he had philosophy enough to reconcile, and forget, but the greatest misfortune was, that the whole affair foon became the talk of the town; the poets of the day lampooned his journey in wicked rhime, and the print shops filled their windows with lu dicrous dicrous exhibitions of him, mounted on the Callender's horfe on the road to Ware. John Gilpin was now, if not one of the most respectable citizens of the time, one of the richest; he had either ferved, or fined for all ward offices; had been Master of the worhipful company of the Drapers and was at length drank to by the Lord Mayor for the office of Sheriff, a fituation that he was induced to accept of at the particular request of Mrs. Gilpin. But of all the peculiarities that ferved ferved to distinguish John Gilpin, no trait in his character was more obfervable, or more the subject of general conversation, than that inordinate appetite that had for many years paft been growing upon him. He scarcely ever sat down to dinner, before he exchanged his right worfhipful perriwig for a light bob, that he might be more cool and easy, and the better enabled to do justice to his knife and fork, the former of which his man Thomas ufed fre quently to have given him to fharpen with a whetstone, with which he always attended behind his master during the time of dinner. Nor Nor was it ever poffible for any thing to put him so soon out of humour, as the baulking him of any thing he had fet his mind upon. One day, having invited fome company to dine with him, at his country house near Hackney; and having ordered a quail to be dreffed, a bird then in great efteem and extremely fcarce on account of the difficulty in catching them, the cook, fooner than fuffer a favourite girl of his to be disappointed, who longed for a bit of it while on the fpit, whipped out his knife, and cut her off one of the legs, which The fhe presently devoured. The cook, therefore, no fooner laid the quail on the table in this mutilated ftate,' than Mr. Sheriff Gilpin, for that was now his title, expreffed his astonishment, and wondered at the fellow's affurance, that he should dare to put a quail before him with only one leg. The cook having nothing but his impudence to carry him through, out-faced his mafter, that quails never had more than one leg; but John Gilpin was fo fenfible of the contrary, that the company had enough to do, to keep him from |