t, such long years,
Must wander on through hopes and fears,
Must ache and bleed beneath your load:
I, nearer to the wayside inn
Where toil shall cease and rest begin,
Am weary, thinking of your road."

Longfellow.

Hereby I promise, and I truly mean to execute it, to give my new green
silk cloth of gold piece, bordered with heads of griffins in golden
broidery, to the Abbey of Saint Austin at Canterbury, if any that
liveth, man or woman, will tell me certainly how evil came into this
world. I want to know why Eva plucked that apple. She must have
plucked it herself, for the serpent could not give it her, having no
hands. And if man--or woman--will go a step further, and tell me why
Adam ate another, he shall have my India-coloured silk, broidered with
golden lions and vultures, whereof I had meant to make me a new gown for
this next Michaelmas feast. It doth seem as if none but a very idiot
could have let in evil and sin and sorrow and pain all over this world,
for the sake of a sweet apple. It must have been sweet, I should think,
because it grew in Eden. But was there never another in all the garden
save only on that tree? Or did man not know what would happen? or was
it that man would not think? That is the way sometimes with some folks,
else that heedless Nichola had not broken my favourite comb.

The question has been in my head many a score of times; but it came just
now because my Lady, my lord's mother, was earnest with me to write in a
book what I could remember of mine early days, when my Lady mine own
mother was carried to Skipton and Pomfret. If those were not evil days,
I know not how to spell the word. And I am very sure it was evil men
that made them; and evil women. I believe bad woman is far worse than
bad man. So saith the Lady Julian, my lord's mother; and being herself
woman, and having been thrice wed, she should know somewhat of women and
men too. Ay, and I were ill daughter if I writ not down also that a
good woman is one of God's blessedest gifts to this evil world; for such
is mine own mother, the Lady Joan de Geneville, that was sometime wife
unto the Lord Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, whose name men of this day
know but too well.

Well-a-day! if a thing is to be, it is best over. It is never any good
to sit on the brink shivering before man plunge in. So, if I must needs
write, be it done. Here is a dozen of parchment, and a full inkhorn,
and grey goose-quill