The Tapster

Communicated by Mr Vignoles

Ye tapsters who’re wont to draw porter or ale,
 And would probably want to draw more,
You may hear of a plan, from a very short tale,
 Which, ’tis likely you ne’er heard before.

Giles Trick’em an hostler the world did begin,
 ’Till on strength of each traveller’s bounty,
He set up a pot-house; and there he laid in,
 I think the worst ale in the county.

Giles’s maxim was this — “If my profits are great,
 The sooner I taste the world’s pleasures;
And hence — like some wise men in the state — 
 He would often times deal in “half measures.”

To a customer once, as conversing they stood,
 Giles bragg’d (for he always would speak
Of his trade in the handsomest terms that he could)
 That he drew his three hogsheads a week.

“That’s a vast deal indeed,” quoth the other, “yet still
 As you don’t seem a man to mind trouble,
I’m certain of this — that you may, if you will,
 Draw nearly that quantity double.”

“I suppose,” replied Giles, with a wink of his eye
 “That you mean me to mix certain drugs
To make people drink — ” “Why, no truly not I;
 What I meant was by ‘Filling your mugs’”

Anthropopagus