This shadow on the dial’s face,
That steals, from day to day,
With slow, unseen, unceasing pace,
Moments, and months, and years away
This shadow, which in every clime,
Since light and motion first began,
Hath held its course sublime;
What is it?--Mortal man!
It is the scythe of Time.
--A shadow only to the eye.
It levels all beneath the sky.
[Illustration: ~Mock funeral of a Bath Chairman.~]
A chairman late’s a chairman dead,
And to his grave, by chairman sped,
They wake him, as they march him through
The streets of Bath, to public view.
_To the Editor._
_Bath._
Sir,--I beg leave to transmit for your use the following attempt at
description of an old and singular custom, performed by the chairman of
this my native city, which perhaps you are not altogether a stranger to,
and which is still kept up among them as often as an opportunity permits
for its performance. Its origin I have not been able to trace, but its
authenticity you may rely on, as it is too often seen to be forgotten by
your Bath readers. I have also accompanied it with the above imperfect
sketch, as a further illustration of their manner of burying the “dead,”
alias, exposing a drunkard of their fraternity. The following is the
manner in which the “obsequies” to the intoxicated are performed.
If a chairman, known to have been “dead” drunk over night, does not
appear on his station before ten o’clock on the succeeding morning, the
“undertaker,” _Anglice_, his partner, proceeds, with such a number of
attendants as will suffice for the ceremony, to the house of the _late_
unfortunate. If he is found in bed, as is usually the case, from the
effects of his sacrifice to the “jolly God,” they pull him out of his
nest, hardly permitting him to dress, and place him on the “bier,”--a
chairman’s horse,--and, throwing a coat over him, which they designate
a “pall,” they perambulate the circuit of his station in the following
order:--