Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/87

 Jenkin, was especially resigned and calm, and leant back in his elbow chair, smoking a mighty long clay pipe, seeming to my eyes a very mellow personage and a dignified also, if you take away his shape, for he was a little barrel of a man. And after he had sat thus somewhile he began to be inquisitive and to ask questions about old sayings and proverbs and those quaint words used by our forefathers, which we now hold for condemned or at least suspect. But I believe that if we persevere in this sort much longer a man will be ashamed to speak of his belly or his guts, and be shown the door if he name these members in a polite assembly. However that may be, nothing passed between us worthy of note, for it is not good for a man to put out his mind in the afternoon, the which has been provided for us to dream in, and talk lightly, and idly to pursue small love-affairs; for I deny not that this petty exertion is to be allowed after four o'clock; indeed if properly discharged it may give a man a gust for his supper. But I forbid all kissing, since this amusement makes one warm, and is hard to leave off, besides.

But after we had supped and the bottle began to go round, the Rubrican, Tom Bamfylde, began one of those dissertations he was addicted to relating to the old privileges and customs of the Court of Cervisage; I think he was trying to clear up our understandings on one of the knotty points in our Rituale, namely the circumstance of a Death's Head being placed before the High Tosspot and delineated on one of the quarters of his seal; the