The Every-day Book and Table Book, v. 1 (of 3): or Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs and Events, Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Month, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the AlmanacHone, William
History
The Every-day Book and Table Book, v. 1 (of 3): or Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs and Events, Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Month, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac
Hone, William
Days; Great Britain -- Social life and customs
A tailor was met out of doors by a person who requested to be measured
for a suit of clothes, to be ready on that spot by that day week; and
the stranger gave him a piece of cloth to make them with. From certain
circumstances, the tailor suspected his new customer to be the devil,
and communicated his conjectures to a clergyman, who advised him to
execute the order, but carefully to save every piece, even the minutest
shred he cut from the cloth, and put the whole into a wrapper with the
clothes; he further promised the tailor to go with him on the appointed
day to the place where they were delivered. When all was ready and the
day arrived, they both went thither, and the person waiting justified
the tailor’s suspicions; for he abused the tailor because he brought a
divine, and immediately vanished in their presence, leaving the clothes
and pieces of cloth in the possession of the tailor, who could not sell
the devil’s cloth to pay himself for the making, for fear of the
consequences:
And here ends the history
Of this wonderful mystery;
from which may be drawn, by way of moral, that a tailor ought not to
take an order from a stranger without a reference.
~January 18.~
_St. Peter’s Chair at Rome._ _St. Paul and Thirty-six Companions in
Egypt._ _St. Prisca._ _St. Deicolus._ _St. Ulfrid._
The _Feast_ of St. Peter’s chair is kept by the Romish church on this
day. Lady Morgan says that it is one of the very few functions as they
are called (funzioni) celebrated in the cathedral of St. Peter, at Rome.
She briefly describes this celebration, and says something respecting
St. Peter’s chair. “The splendidly dressed troops that line the nave of
the cathedral, the variety and richness of vestments which clothe the
various church and lay dignitaries, abbots, priests, canons, prelates,
cardinals, doctors, dragoons, senators, and grenadiers, which march in
procession, complete, as they proceed up the vast space of this wondrous
temple, a spectacle nowhere to be equalled within the pale of European
civilisation. In the midst of swords and crosiers, of halberds and
crucifixes, surrounded by banners, and bending under the glittering
tiara of threefold power, appears the aged, feeble, and worn-out pope,
borne aloft on men’s shoulders, in a chair of crimson and gold, and
environed by slaves, (for such they look,) who waft, from plumes of
ostrich feathers mounted on ivory wands, a cooling gale, to refresh his
exhausted frame, too frail for the weight of such honours. All fall
prostrate, as he passes up the church to a small choir and throne,
temporarily erected beneath the chair of St. Peter. A solemn service is
then performed, hosannas arise, and royal votarists and diplomatic
devotees parade the church, with guards of honour and running footmen,
while English gentlemen and ladies mob and scramble, and crowd and
bribe, and fight their way to the best place they can obtain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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