Another scene, closely connected with the present, will complete the picture. "The Ordinaries" of those days were the lounging places of the men of the town, and the "fantastic gallants," who herded together.[75] Ordinaries were the "exchange for news," the echoing places for all sorts of town-talk: there they might hear of the last new play and poem, and the last fresh widow, who was sighing for some knight to make her a lady; these resorts were attended also "to save charges of housekeeping." The reign of James I. is characterised by all the wantonness of prodigality among one class, and all the penuriousness and rapacity in another, which met in the dissolute indolence of a peace of twenty years. But a more striking feature in these "Ordinaries" showed itself as soon as "the voyder had cleared the table." Then began "the shuffling and cutting on one side, and the bones rattling on the other." The "Ordinarie," in fact, was a gambling-house, like those now expressively termed "Hells," and I doubt if the present "Infernos" exceed the whole _diablerie_ of our ancestors.
In the former scene of sharping they derived their cant terms from a rabbit-warren, but in the present their allusions partly relate to an aviary, and truly the proverb suited them, "of birds of a feather." Those who first propose to sit down to play are called the _leaders_; the ruined gamesters are the _forlorn-hope_; the great winner is the _eagle_; a stander-by, who encourages, by little ventures himself, the freshly-imported gallant, who is called the _gull_, is the _wood-pecker_; and a monstrous bird of prey, who is always hovering round the table, is the _gull-groper_, who, at a pinch, is the benevolent Audley of the Ordinary.
There was, besides, one other character of an original cast, apparently the friend of none of the party, and yet in fact, "the Atlas which supported the Ordinarie on his shoulders:" he was sometimes significantly called the _impostor_.
The _gull_ is a young man whose father, a citizen or a squire, just dead, leaves him "ten or twelve thousand pounds in ready money, besides some hundreds a-year." Scouts are sent out, and lie in ambush for him; they discover what "apothecarie's shop he resorts to every morning, or in what tobacco-shop in Fleet-street he takes a pipe of smoke in the afternoon;" the usual resorts of the loungers of that day. Some sharp wit of the Ordinarie, a pleasant fellow, whom Robert Greene calls the "taker-up," one of universal conversation, lures the heir of seven hundred a-year to "The Ordinarie." A _gull_ sets the whole aviary in spirits; and Decker well describes the flutter of joy and expectation: "The _leaders_ maintained themselves brave; the _forlorn-hope_, that drooped before, doth now gallantly come on; the _eagle_ feathers his nest; the _wood-pecker_ picks up the crumbs; the _gull-groper_ grows fat with good feeding; and the _gull_ himself, at whom every one has a pull, hath in the end scarce feathers to keep his back warm."