After supper we had more wine and tobacco. Some of the company fell to card-playing, some to dice. Then the door opened, and a man came in with two children, boys, who sang with him while he played the guitar. They sang madrigals very sweetly, each his own part truly and with justice. When they finished, the boys went around with a platter and collected farthings. And having paid our reckoning we went away. In the streets outside, the women sat at their doors or stood about gossiping with each other. At every corner a bonfire was merrily burning. This was partly because it was the Vigil of St. John the Baptist, partly because in the city they always lit bonfires in the summer months to purify and cleanse the air. But because of the day every door was shadowed with green branches--birch, long fennel, St. John's wort, orpin, white lilies, and such like--garnished with garlands of beautiful flowers. They had also hung up lamps of colored glass, with oil to burn all the night, so that the streets looked gay and bright with the red light of the bonfires playing on the tall gabled fronts, and the red and green light of the lamps. From all the taverns, as we passed, came the sound of music, singing, and revelry, with the clink of glasses and the uplifting of voices thick with wine. There was the sound of music and singing from the private houses. Everywhere singing--everywhere joy and happiness. In the streets the very prentices and their sweethearts danced, to the pipe and tabor, those figures called the Brawl and the Canary, and better dancing, with greater spirit and more fidelity to the steps, had I never before seen. At last we stopped once more before the door of John Stow's house. "Sir," he said, taking my hand, "the time has come to bid you farewell. It has been a great honor--believe me--to converse with one of a generation yet to come, and a great satisfaction to learn that my name will live so long beside those of the poets of this noble age. Many things there are into which I would fain have inquired. The looking into futurity is an idle thing, yet I would fain have asked if you have put a new steeple on Paul's; if you still suffer the desecration of that place; if London will spread still more beyond her walls; if her trade will still more increase; if the Spaniard will be always permitted to hold the Continent of America; if the Pope will still be reigning; with many other things. But you came this day to learn, and I to teach. When next you come, suffer me in turn to put questions. And now, good sir, farewell. Behold!" He raised his hands in admiration. "I have spent a day--a whole day--with a man of the nineteenth century!! Bones a' me!!!" So he went within and shut the door. VIII CHARLES THE SECOND