Samuel Smith Kilburn, American
“I Know, I Know — This Is Not a Great Time To Be in Stocks. You’re About the Hundredth Person To Use That Line Today,” ca. 1880
Engraving
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Info about this artist can be found at his Wikipedia page.
/// Punished by being placed into stocks
isn’t brutal like hammering rocks.
There’s fresh air; not too hot.
Unlike that hellish spot
locked up into a small airless box.
/// Stocks design has a bad limitation,
now his hand and foot lost pigmentation.
They claim “one size fits all,”
but two holes are too small.
Gangrene struck when he lost circulation.
/// In New England, in Spring, snow may come.
His bare hands will most likely turn numb.
Though he’s wearing a hat,
locked up here on his prat,
to the ague he may well succumb.
/// His coat’s padded which makes him look fat.
Woolen long johns protect where he sat.
He prepared for the cold
with a wardrobe choice bold.
There are earmuffs (and brains) ‘neath his hat.
/// Though the edict he’d broken was recent
‘twas the law; to the stocks he must be sent.
Through a stroke of ill luck
his hat band came unbuck-
-led, and that, we all know, is indecent!
/// Three young girls, with the Good Lord to guide ’em,
claimed that while in the woods they had spied him
sign the devil’s blood pact.
Those two, “caught in the act,”
are in stocks. (That’s the devil beside him.)
/// You protest that you don’t see the demon?
That’s admitting with Satan you’re schemin’.
You’ll be punished, unless
you name names and confess
that you’ve bathed in Hell-spawn’s blood and semen.