If you fall to dice after Supper, let the drawers
be as familiar with you as your Barber, and venture
their siluer amongst you; no matter where they had
it: you are to cherish the vnthriftinesse of such yong
tame pigions, if you be a right gentleman: for when
two are yoakt together by the purse strings, and draw
the _Chariot_ of Madam _Prodigalitie_, when one faints
in the way and slips his hornes, let the other reioice
and laugh at him.
At your departure forth the house, to kiss mine
Hostis ouer the barre, or to accept of the courtesie
of the Celler when tis offered you by the drawers,
and you must know that kindnes neuer creepes vpon
them, but when they see you almost cleft to the
shoulders, or to bid any of the Vintners good night,
is as commendable, as for a Barber after trimming to
laue your face with sweete water.
To conclude, count it an honour, either to inuite
or be inuited to any Rifling: for commonly, though
you finde much satten there, yet you shall likewise
finde many cittizens sonnes, and heirs, and yonger
brothers there, who smell out such feasts more
greedily then taylors h[=u]t upon sundaies after weddings.
And let any hooke draw you either to a
Fencers supper, or to a Players that acts such a
part for a wager; for by this meanes you shall get
experience, by beeing guilty to their abhominable
shauing.
CHAPTER VIII
How a Gallant is to behaue himselfe passing through the
Cittie, at all houres of the night, and how to passe by any
watch.
AFTER the sound of pottle-pots is out of your eares,
and that the spirit of Wine and Tobacco walkes in
your braine, the Tauerne door being shut vppon
your backe, cast about to passe through the widest
and goodliest streetes in the Cittie. And if your
meanes cannot reach to the keeping of a boy, hire
one of the drawers, to be as a lanthorne vnto your
feete, and to light you home: and, still as you
approch neere any night-walker that is vp as late as
yourselfe curse and swear (like one that speaks hie
dutch) in a lofty voice, because your men haue vsd
you so like a rascoll in not waiting vpon you, and
vow the next morning to pull their blew cases ouer
their eares, though, if your chamber were well searcht,
you giue onely six pence a weeke to some old woman
to make your bed, and that she is all the seruing-creatures
you giue wages to. If you smell a watch
(and that you may easily doe, for commonly they
eate onions to keep them in sleeping, which they
account a medicine against cold) or, if you come
within danger of their browne bils, let him that is
your candlestick, and holds vp your torch from dropping
(for to march after a linck is shoomaker-like),
let _Ignis Fatuus_, I say, being within the reach of the
Constables staffe, aske aloud, _Sir Giles_, or _Sir
Abram_, will you turne this way, or downe that
streete? It skils not, though there be none dubd
in your Bunch; the watch will winke at you, onely
for the loue they beare to armes and knighthood:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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