strings, as a school-boy with his points, when he
is going to be whipped, 'till the master, weary with long stay, forgives
him. When the reckoning is paid, he says, It must not be so, yet is strait
pacified, and cries, What remedy? His borrowings are like subsidies, each
man a shilling or two, as he can well dispend; which they lend him, not
with a hope to be repaid, but that he will come no more. He holds a
strange tyrrany over men, for he is their debtor, and they fear him as a
creditor. He is proud of any employment, though it be but to carry
commendations, which he will be sure to deliver at eleven of the
clock.[27] They in courtesy bid him stay, and he in manners cannot deny
them. If he find but a good look to assure his welcome, he becomes their
half-boarder, and haunts the threshold so long 'till he forces good nature
to the necessity of a quarrel. Publick invitations he will not wrong with
his absence, and is the best witness of the sheriff's hospitality.[28] Men
shun him at length as they would do an infection, and he is never crossed
in his way if there be but a lane to escape him. He has done with the age
as his clothes to him, hung on as long as he could, and at last drops off.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] We learn from Harrison's _Description of England_, prefixed to
Holinshed, that _eleven o'clock_ was the usual time for dinner during the
reign of Elizabeth. "With vs the nobilitie, gentrie, and students, doo
ordinarilie go to dinner at _eleuen before noone_, and to supper at fiue,
or between fiue and six at afternoon." (vol. i. page 171. edit. 1587.) The
alteration in manners at this time is rather singularly evinced, from a
passage immediately following the above quotation, where we find that
_merchants_ and _husbandmen_ dined and supped at a _later hour than the
nobility_.

[28] Alluding to the public dinners given by the sheriff at particular
seasons of the year. So in _The Widow_, a comedy, 4to. 1652.

"And as at a _sheriff's table_, O blest custome!
A poor indebted gentleman may dine,
Feed well, and without fear, and depart so."

XV.

A CARRIER

Is his own hackney-man; for he lets himself out to travel as well as his
horses. He is the ordinary embassador between friend and friend, the
father and the son, and brings rich presents to the one, but never returns
any back again. He is no unlettered man, though in shew simple; for
questionless, he has much in his budget, which he can ut