Boys who drew the Prize, should be handsomely rewarded; that he would give Mr. Blewitt, Owner of the Abingdon Machine, at least a New Body for his Stage, on which should be painted the Cooper’s Arms, together with the Number of his Ticket, 3m379; that he would clothe all the Necessitous of his own Parish; and likewise give a Couple of the finest fat Oxen he could purchase to the Poor of Abingdon in general, and lay out the price of these Oxen in Bread, to be distributed at the same time.  To the Ringers, in Number, fourteen, he gave Liquor in Plenty, and a Guinea each; and calling for a wet Mop, rubbed out all the Ale Scores in his Kitchen.  In a Word he displayed a noble Liberality, made every Body welcome; and what is highly to be applauded, showed a charitable Disposition towards the Relief of the Poor.

We could imagine the joviality of Mr. Alder’s customers when they found their ale scores so generously cancelled, which must have been fairly extensive, seeing that it required a “mop” to remove them from the inside of his kitchen door.  We had often seen these “scores” at country inns behind the doors of the rooms where the poorer customers were served.  It was a simple method of “book-keeping,” as the customers’ initials were placed at the head of a line of straight strokes marked by the landlord with white chalk, each figure “one” representing a pint of beer served to his customer during the week, and the money for the “pints” had to be paid at the week’s end, for Saturday was the day when wages were invariably paid to working men in the country; as scarcely one of them could write his own name, it was a simple method of keeping accounts that appealed to them, and one that could easily be understood, for all they had to do, besides paying the money, was to count the number of strokes opposite their names.  In some places it was the custom to place P. for pint and Q. for quart, which accounted for the origin of the phrase, Mind your p’s and q’s, so that the phrase, becoming a general warning to “look out,” was originally used as a warning to the drinker to look at the score of p’s and q’s against him.  We once heard of a landlord, however, whose first name was Daniel, and who was dishonest.  When a customer got “half-seas over” and could not see straight, he used a piece of chalk with a nick cut in it, so that when he marked “one” on the door the chalk marked two; but he was soon found out, and lost most of his trade, besides being nicknamed “Dan Double-chalk.”  The custom of keeping ale scores in this way was referred to in the poem of “Richard Bell,” who was—­

  As plodding a man, so his neighbours tell, as ever a chisel wielded.

Richard’s fault was that he spent too much money at a public-house named the “Jolly Kings,” and—­

  One night, ’twas pay night!  Richard’s score
  Reach’d half across the Parlour door. 
    His “Pints” had been so many
  And when at length the bill was paid,
  All that was left, he found, dismay’d,
    Was but a single penny!