He is fumbling with his purse-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 straight 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 tyranny 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.
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.
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