[p. 63] . . . Before [leaving] Scituate the first time he used to help his father in the store, and often carried the ‘black-strap’ (rum sweetened with molasses) down to the yards, but during the seventy-eight years of his life [1889], has never used tobacco or tasted spirit, save as a medicine. He used to play the clarinet and with Uncle Sam Rogers, went to singing school in Pembroke. At that time Mr. Rogers was courting a Miss Standish, and Mr. Foster was obliged to wait for him to go to her home and do his courting, as Mr. Rogers had the team and it was a long walk. . . An epitaph current with the [Scituate shipyard] reads as follows.From the same source we find what Mr. Usher failed to mention, that while serving Medford in 1884 Captain Foster was the oldest man in the Legislature—the ‘Dean of the House.’Under this greensward pat,The deceased was noted for putting other men's sheep in his own flock and marking them with his private mark. We have no proof of the identity of the writer but the lines are not inconsistent with Mr. Foster's jovial disposition.
Lies the hulk of old. . . . . . . . .
Shepherds rejoice and do not weep,
For he is dead who stole your sheep.
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