The English Spy, page 209 by Bernard Blackmantle
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Convey'd the well cogg'd bones away, Exposed them to the throng. Now blown, "his occupation's" o'er, Indictments, actions, on him pour, His ill got wealth must fly; And faster than it came, the law Can fraud's last ill got shilling draw, Tom's pocket soon drain'd dry. Again at sea, a wreck, struck down, By fickle fortune and the town, Without the means to bolt. His days in bed, for fear of Bums, At night among the Legs he comes, Who gibe him for a dolt. He's cut, and comrades, one by one, Avoid him as they would a dun. Here finishes our tale-- Tom Tick, the life, the soul, the whim Of courts and fashion when in trim, Is left-- WAITING FOR BAIL.
~240~~
[Illustration: page240]
By the time old Mark Supple had finished his somewhat lengthy tale, the major part of the motley group of eccentrics who surrounded us were terribly cut: the garrulous organ of Jack Milburn was unable to articulate a word; Goose B----l, the gourmand, was crammed full, and looked, as he lay in the arms of Morpheus, like a fat citizen on the night of a lord mayor's dinner--a lump of inanimate mortality. In one corner lay a poor little Grecian, papa Chrysanthus Demetriades, whom Tom Echo had plied with bishop till he fell off his chair; Count Dennet was safely deposited beside him; and old Will Stewart,{28} the poacher, was just humming himself to sleep with the fag end of an old ballad as he sat upon the ground
28 Portraits of the three last-mentioned eccentrics will be found in page 245, sketched from the life.
~241~~
resting his back against the defunct Grecian. A diminutive little cripple, Johnny Holloway, was sleeping between his legs, upon whose head Tom had fixed a wig of immense size, crowned with an opera hat and a fox's tail for a feather. "Now to bury the dead," said Eglantine; "let in the lads, Mark." "Now we shall have a little sport, old fellows," said Echo: "come, Transit, where are your paints and brushes?" In a minute the who