unthrifts. Some call them emperors, but I respect no
crowns but crowns in the purse. Any man may wear a silver crown that
hath made a fray in Smithfield, and lost but a piece of his brain-pan;
and to tell you plain, your golden crowns are little better in
substance, and many times got after the same sort.

SUM. Gross-headed sot! how light he makes of state!

AUT. Who treadeth not on stars, when they are fall'n?
Who talketh not of states, when they are dead?
A fool conceits no further than he sees,
He hath no sense of aught but what he feels.

CHRIST. Ay, ay; such wise men as you come to beg at such fools' doors
as we be.

AUT. Thou shutt'st thy door; how should we beg of thee?
No alms but thy sink carries from thy house.

WILL SUM. And I can tell you that's as plentiful alms for the plague as
the Sheriff's tub to them of Newgate.

AUT. For feast thou keepest none; cankers thou feed'st.
The worms will curse thy flesh another day,
Because it yieldeth them no fatter prey.

CHRIST. What worms do another day, I care not, but I'll be sworn upon a
whole kilderkin of single beer, I will not have a worm-eaten nose, like
a pursuivant, while I live. Feasts are but puffing up of the flesh, the
purveyors for diseases; travel, cost, time, ill-spent. O, it were a trim
thing to send, as the Romans did, round about the world for provision
for one banquet. I must rig ships to Samos for peacocks; to Paphos for
pigeons; to Austria for oysters; to Phasis for pheasants; to Arabia for
phoenixes; to Meander for swans; to the Orcades for geese; to Phrygia
for woodcocks; to Malta for cranes; to the Isle of Man for puffins; to
Ambracia for goats; to Tartole for lampreys; to Egypt for dates; to
Spain for chestnuts--and all for one feast.

WILL SUM. O sir, you need not: you may buy them at London better cheap.

CHRIST. _Liberalitas liberalitate perit_; Love me little, and love me
long[131]: our feet must have wherewithal to feed the stones: our backs,
walls of wool to keep out the cold that besiegeth our warm blood; our
doors must have bars, our doublets must have buttons. Item, for an old
sword to scrape the stones before the door with; three halfpence for
stitching a wooden tankard that was burst. These water-bearers will
empty the conduit and a man's coffers at once. Not a porter that brings
a man a letter but will have his penny. I am afraid to keep past one or
two servants, lest (hungry knaves) they should rob me; and those I keep