He
discharged all the duties of his station with great fidelity,
unquestionable honesty, and much outward decorum, but, if we may
believe his contemporary, Nanny Smith, who, as housekeeper, shared the
sway of the household with him, he was very lax in his minor morals,
and used to sing loose and profane songs as he presided at the table in
the servants' hall, or sat taking his ale and smoking his pipe by the
evening fire. Joe had evidently derived his convivial notions from the
race of English country squires who flourished in the days of his
juvenility. Nanny Smith was scandalized at his ribald songs, but being
above harm herself, endured them in silence. At length, on his singing
them before a young girl of sixteen, she could contain herself no
longer, but read him a lecture that made his ears ring, and then
flounced off to bed. The lecture seems, by her account, to have
staggered Joe, for he told her the next morning that he had had a
terrible dream in the night. An Evangelist stood at the foot of his bed
with a great Dutch Bible, which he held with the printed part toward
him, and after a while pushed it in his face. Nanny Smith undertook to
interpret the vision, and read from it such a homily, and deduced such
awful warnings, that Joe became quite serious, left off singing, and
took to reading good books for a month; but after that, continued
Nanny, he relapsed and became as bad as ever, and continued to sing
loose and profane songs to his dying day.
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