At his kind hand ray customary crums,
And common portion in his feast of scraps;
Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent
With our long day and tedious beggary.

These were my manners, this my way of life,
Till age and slow disease me overtook,
And sever'd from my sightless master's side.
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die.
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost,
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared,
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand,
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest,
In long and lasting union to attest,
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog.

These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a well-known
figure, or part of the figure, of a man, who used to glide his comely
upper half over the pavements of London, wheeling along with most
ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood; a spectacle to natives,
to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a
florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the storm and
sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific,
a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man
brought down to his own level. The common cripple would despise his
own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart,
of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him; for the
accident, which brought him low, took place during the riots of 1780,
and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed earth-born, an Antæus,
and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He