The salesmen of Snow Hill would have stoned him; the "fishwives" of Turn-again Lane rail at him; the London Prentices of Fleet Street, with their "What lack you, countryman?" seamper away from him. The "haberdashers, that sell hats I the mercers and silk-men, that live in Paternoster Row," all set upon him. He receives no better treatment in Cheapside--A cheesemonger in Bread Street; "the lads that wish Lent were all the year," in Fish Street; a merchant on the Exchange; the "gallant girls," whose "brave shops of ware" were "up stairs and the drapers and poulterers of Graccchurch Street, to whom conscience was "Dutch or Spanish," flout and jeer him. A trip to Southwark, the King's Bench, and to the Blackman Street demireps, proves that "conscience is nothing." In St. George's Fields, "rooking rascals," playing at "nine pins," tell him to prate on till he is hoarse." Espying a windmill hard by, he hies to the miller, whose excuse for not dealing with him was, that he must steal out of every bushel "a peek, if not three gallons." Conscience then trudges on "to try what would befall i' the country," whither we will not follow him.
I delight in a Fiddler's Fling, and revel in the exhilarating perfume of those odoriferous garlands * gathered on sunshiny holidays and star-twinkling nights, bewailing how disappointed lovers go to sea, and how romantic young lasses follow them in blue jackets and trousers!
* "When I travelled," said the Spectator, "I took a particular delight in hearing the songs and fables that are come from father to son, and are most in vogue among the common people of the countries through which I passed; for it is impossible that anything should be universally tasted and approved by a multitude (though they are only the rabble of a nation), which hath not in it some peculiar aptness to please and gratify the mind of man."
Old tales, old songs, and an old jest, Our stomachs easiliest digest. "Listen to me, my lovly shepherd's joye, And thou shalt heare, with mirth and muckle glee, Some pretie tales, which, when I was a boye, My toothless grandame oft hath told to mee.
Nay, rather than the tuneful race should be extinct, expect to see me some night, with my paper lantern and cracked spectacles, singing you woeful tragedies to love-lorn maids and cobblers' apprentices."
*