Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/30

 "Friend, what sow you?" he will answer, without more ado, "Hot beer." Whereby you will perceive how subtle a people we are, and how keenly we search into eschatology, looking rather to final ends and effects than to what is but passing and transitory. And, if you come to practice and leave theories, I suppose there is not a man amongst us that loveth not a cup of old and corny ale, who will not joyfully dip his beard into the foam, turn up the can, and pour the torrent down. Wherefore amongst us the Mystery of Ale Drapers is held in great honour and repute, from the highest unto the lowest, from the little taverns on lonely roads, atop of hills, and in forgotten valleys to the great masters of the Tankard that fill the can in our fenced cities and towns of frequentation. Of these last we have some egregious specimens, fellows with round paunches and long heads, who have seen so many generations of travellers, and such diversity of morals, trickeries, methods, humours, counterfeits, revelries, noses, doublets, lecheries, japes, breeches, arguments, and appetites that their wits have grown very sharp, so that they perfectly comprehend the difference between a cassock and a smock, understand when it is wise to ask questions, and when to lay finger unto nose, when to call the crier, and when mumchance is the only word. Sometimes these gentry lose all sense of hearing and seeing to boot, and inquisitive strangers who wish to find out things, and have a well-founded conceit that the master of the Ivy-Bush sees what is done under the ivy, are greatly as-