The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

The sick Lady and the Almanac.
By Peter Pindar, jun.

POOR old woman with a diarrhæa,
Brought on by flip-flop tea and rogget beer,
Went to Sangrado with a woeful face;
And barking twice or thrice to clear her throat,
She told him in a plaintive note her case.
Disease had brought her to a doleful state,
Her legs seem'd tot'ring with a lifeless weight,
Her bosom panted for the lack of breath,
Her voice seem'd echoing from the vale of death,
Her sunken orbs but dimly shone;
A ghastly spectre! hardly skin and bone!
The doctor being in a wond'rous hurry
To fill a lady in a hysteric flurry
Could hardly stop to hear pale mis'ry's moan;
So, jumping in his coach, he bawl'd go on,
However, to keep the dame from kingdom come,
From the sharp gripe of grinning death so cruel,
He told her that he need but hurry home,
And boil some Bole Armoniac in her gruel
Then call upon him soon, and let him know
If things went better, or in statu quo.
The dame obedient to the doctor's order,
Came when the time prefix'd was ended;
Health seem'd to triumph o'er the dire disorder,
But still he seem'd a little broken winded.
Sangrado felt her pulse, and tongue inspected,
Then ask'd her if she'd done as he directed:
"Zooks sir, for though I sent my godson Jack
From house to house among my neighbors,
To buy a Moore's Old Almanac,
He could not get one after all his labors;
And so I took and boil'd the BABES IN THE WOOD;
And praise the Lord! it's done a mort of good."