For this reason the crabs will go side-long, and the rope-makers backward; the little stools will get upon the benches, and the spits on the racks, and the bands on the hats; fleas will be generally black; bacon will run away from peas in lent; there won’t be a bean left in a twelfth cake, nor an ace in a flush; the dice won’t run as you wish, tho’ you cog them, and the chance that you desire will seldom come; brutes shall speak in several places; Shrovetide will have its day; one part of the world shall disguise itself to gull and chouse the other, and run about the streets like a parcel of addle-pated animals and mad devils; such a hurly-burly was never seen since the devil was a little boy; and there will be above seven and twenty irregular verbs made this year, if Priscian don’t hold them in. If God don’t help us, we shall have our hands and hearts full. _OF THE DISEASES THIS YEAR_ This year the stone-blind shall see but very little; the deaf shall hear but scurvily; the dumb shan’t speak very plain; the rich shall be somewhat in a better case than the poor, and the healthy than the sick. Whole flocks, herds, and droves of sheep, swine and oxen; cocks and hens, ducks and drakes, geese and ganders, shall go to pot; but the mortality will not be altogether so great among apes, monkeys, baboons and dromedaries. As for old age, ’twill be incurable this year, because of the years past. Those who are sick of the pleurisy will feel a plaguy stitch in their sides; catarrhs this year shall distill from the brain on the lower parts; sore eyes will by no means help the sight; ears shall be at least as scarce and short in Gascony, and among knights of the post, as ever; and a most horrid and dreadful, virulent, malignant, catching, perverse and odious malady, shall be almost epidemical, insomuch that many shall run mad upon it, not knowing what nails to drive to keep the wolf from the door, very often plotting, contriving, cudgeling and puzzling their weak shallow brains, and syllogizing and prying up and down for the philosopher’s stone, tho’ they only get Midas’s lugs by the bargain. I quake for very fear when I think on’t; for I assure you, few will escape this disease, which Averroes calls lack of money, and by consequence of the last year’s comet, and Saturn’s retrogradation, there will be a horrid clutter between the cats and the rats, hounds and hares, hawks and ducks, and eke between the monks and eggs. _OF THE FRUITS OF THE EARTH THIS YEAR_