and with several intervals. His friends were about the bed, and he spoke to them thus:
"My Friends,
It is time for a man to look grave, when he has one foot there. I once had only a punnic fear of death; but of late I have pundred it more seriously. Every fit of coffing hath put me in mind of my coffin; though dissolute men seldomest think of dissolution. This is a very great alteration: I, that supported myself with good wine, must now be myself supported by a small bier. A fortune-teller once looked on my hand, and said, this man is to be a great traveller; he will soon be at the diet of Worms, and from thence go to Ratisbone. But now I understand his double meaning. I desire to be privately buried, for I think a publick funeral looks like Bury fair; and the rites of the dead too often prove wrong to the living. Methinks the word itself best expresses the number, neither few nor all. A dying man should not think of obsequies, but ob se quies. Little did I
there burst from the clouds such a torrent of rain as wetted him through. He galloped forward; and, as soon as he came to an inn, he was met instantly by a drawer: "Here," said he to the fellow, stretching out one of his arms, "take off my coat immediately." "No, Sir, I won't," said the drawer. "Pox, confound you," said Ashe, "take off my coat this instant." "No, Sir," replied the drawer, "I dare not take off your coat; for it is felony to strip an Ash." Tom was delighted beyond measure, frequently told the story, and said he would have given fifty guineas to have been the author of that pun. This little tract of Dr. Swift's, entitled, "The Dying Words of Tom Ashe," was written several years before the decease of Tom, and was merely designed to exhibit the manner in which such an eternal punster might have expressed himself on his deathbed.
