Timed by nice instinct, creamed the mug of flip
That made from mouth to mouth its genial round,
Nor left one nature wholly winter-bound;
Hence dropt the tinkling coal all mellow-ripe
For Uncle Reuben’s talk-extinguished pipe;
Hence rayed the heat, as from an indoor sun,
That wooed forth many a shoot of rustic fun. 380
Here Ezra ruled as king by right divine;
No other face had such a wholesome shine,
No laugh like his so full of honest cheer;
Above the rest it crowed like Chanticleer.

’In this one room his dame you never saw,
Where reigned by custom old a Salic law;
Here coatless lolled he on his throne of oak,
And every tongue paused midway if he spoke. 
Due mirth he loved, yet was his sway severe;
No blear-eyed driveller got his stagger here; 390
“Measure was happiness; who wanted more,
Must buy his ruin at the Deacon’s store;”
None but his lodgers after ten could stay,
Nor after nine on eves of Sabbath-day. 
He had his favorites and his pensioners,
The same that gypsy Nature owns for hers: 
Loose-ended souls, whose skills bring scanty gold,
And whom the poor-house catches when they’re old;
Rude country-minstrels, men who doctor kine,
Or graft, and, out of scions ten, save nine; 400
Creatures of genius they, but never meant
To keep step with the civic regiment,
These Ezra welcomed, feeling in his mind
Perhaps some motions of the vagrant kind;
These paid no money, yet for them he drew
Special Jamaica from a tap they knew,
And, for their feelings, chalked behind the door
With solemn face a visionary score. 
This thawed to life in Uncle Reuben’s throat
A torpid shoal of jest and anecdote, 410
Like those queer fish that doze the droughts away,
And wait for moisture, wrapped in sun-baked clay;
This warmed the one-eyed fiddler to his task,
Perched in the corner on an empty cask,
By whose shrill art rapt suddenly, some boor
Rattled a double-shuffle on the floor;
“Hull’s Victory” was, indeed, the favorite air,
Though “Yankee Doodle” claimed its proper share.

’’Twas there I caught from Uncle Reuben’s lips,
In dribbling monologue ’twixt whiffs and sips, 420
The story I so long have tried to tell;
The humor coarse, the persons common,—­well,
From Nature only do I love to paint,
Whether she send a satyr or a saint;
To me Sincerity’s the one thing good,
Soiled though she be and lost to maidenhood. 
Quompegan is a town some ten miles south
From Jethro, at Nagumscot river-mouth,
A seaport town, and makes its title good
With lumber and dried fish and eastern wood. 430
Here Deacon Bitters dwelt and kept the Store,
The richest man for many a mile of shore;
In little less than everything dealt he,
From meeting-houses to a chest of tea;
So dextrous therewithal a flint to skin,