[Picture: The Chair-mender]
Old chairs to mend! old chairs to mend!
If I’d as much money as I could spend,
I’d leave off crying, old chairs to mend!
Perhaps so, but then you might not be more healthy, useful, or happy,
than at present. Exercise and sobriety contribute to health, and
industry produces the means of procuring wealth sufficient to live in a
comfortable manner. A chair-bottomer is a very useful man: he
contributes to the ease and comfort of many of his employers; yet, one
cannot help asking, Has every chair which wants a new bottom, been worn
out fairly? What! have no little boys, or great girls, been standing up
in them? or drawing them up and down the house and yard, to wear out the
rushes?
During the war with Holland, rushes for bottoming chairs were very scarce
and dear, so that the poor men in that line of business found a great
difficulty to obtain materials and employment.
This man, although he appears poor, yet he occupies the highest situation
in the city of London, having taken his seat in Panyer Alley, leading
from Newgate Street to Paternoster Row; where a stone is placed, in the
wall of one of the houses, with the following inscription in old English
verse:
WHEN Y HAVE SOVGHT
THE CITTY ROVND,
YET STILL THS IS
THE HIGHST GROVND.
AVGVST THE 27,
1688.