The 'prentices of Cheapside were a conspicuous feature of the street at this period. During the day they paraded up and down in front of their masters' shop, crying "What d'ye lack; what d'ye lack?" followed by an enumeration and laudation of the articles within, and the wonderful bargains to be picked up; and in the evening listening eagerly for the sound of the curfew bell as the signal for shutting up shop. Stow tells us that in his time the bell-ringer was sometimes late, and that the 'prentices, precursors of the "Early Closing Movement" of our own time, addressed him as follows:— "Clerk of the Bow-bell, with the yellow locks, For thy late ringing thy head shall have knocks." The bell-ringer, knowing that they would be as good as their word, and deeming "discretion to be the better part of valour," replies:— "Children of Chepe, hold you all still, For you shall have Bow-bell ring at your will." These 'prentices were a pugnacious race of mortals, and were ever ready to issue forth at the cry of "Clubs! clubs! 'Prentices! 'Prentices!" leaving the shop to take care of itself, to join in any fray that was going on in the street, especially if it were a demonstration against a foreign interloper in trade. They waited upon their master and mistress at their meals, and on Sundays and saint-days followed them demurely to church, carrying hassocks for them to kneel upon. In the summer evenings, after the shops were shut and evening prayer over, as Stow tells us, they were wont "to exercise their wasters and bucklers, and the maidens, one of them playing upon a timbrel, in sight of their masters and dames, to dance for garlands hanged across the streets," and on holidays they went out to Finsbury Fields, and other open places, and exercised themselves in leaping, dancing, shooting, wrestling, casting the stone, etc., but especially in bow and arrow practice. Chaucer, in the _Cook's Tale_, thus describes the 'prentice of Cheapside:— "A prentice dwelt whilom in our cite; At every bridale would he sing and hoppe; He loved bet the taverne than the shoppe, For when ther any riding was in Chepe, Out of the shoppe thider wold he lepe, And till that he had all the sight ysein, And danced wel, he wold not come agen."