Page:An English Garner Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (Volume 1 1877).pdf/90

 out. It is a very pavement of glass, but that it is more strong. The Thames now lies in; or rather is turned, as some think, bankrupt: and dares not show her head; for all the water of it floats up and down like a spring in a cellar.

Coun. GOD help the poor fishes! It is a hard world with them, when their houses are taken over their heads. They use not [are not accustomed] to lie under such thick roofs. But I pray, Sir, are all the arches of your famous London Bridge so dammed up with ice that the flakes show like so many frozen gates shut up close; and that nothing passes through them; nay, that a man cannot look through them as he had wont?

Cit. No such matter. The Thames with her ebbing and flowing, hath at sundry times brought down, aye winter castles of ice; which, jostling against the arches of the Bridge, and striving—like an unruly drunkard at a gate of the city in the night time—to pass through, have there been stayed and lodged so long till they have lain in heaps, and got one upon another: but not so ambitiously as you speak of them.

Coun. And do not the western barges come down upon certain artificial pulleys and engines, sliding on the ice; to serve your city with fuel?

Cit. That were a wonder worth the seeing, and more strange than the rowing over steeples by land in a wherry. I assure you these stories shall never stand in our chronicles. There is no such motion.

Coun. But I hope. Sir, you and I may drink a pint of sack in the tavern that runs upon wheels on the river, as well as a thousand have done besides, may we not? The motion of that wine cellar, I am sure is to be seen. Is it not?

Cit. The water cellar is, but the wine cellars have too good doings on the land to leave that, and to set up taverns on the river. You know more in the country I perceive than we do in the city of these matters.

Coun. Nay, Sir, we hear more but know less. We hear the lies, and you know the truth. Why law you now, had not I made this journey to London, I had died in misbelief. Mine ears might thus have made me to have been called an old doting fool. For I, giving credit to report, should have uttered these fables for truths: and I being an old man, should