well-favouredly, as they said, and in truth
treated them after a fashion. They began their meal as you end yours, with
cheese, and ended it with mustard and lettuce, as Martial tells us the
ancients did. Afterwards a platterful of mustard was brought before every
one of them, and thus they made good the proverb, After meat comes mustard.

Their diet was this:

O' Sundays they stuffed their puddings with puddings, chitterlings, links,
Bologna sausages, forced-meats, liverings, hogs' haslets, young quails, and
teals. You must also always add cheese for the first course, and mustard
for the last.

O' Mondays they were crammed with peas and pork, cum commento, and
interlineary glosses.

O' Tuesdays they used to twist store of holy-bread, cakes, buns, puffs,
lenten loaves, jumbles, and biscuits.

O' Wednesdays my gentlemen had fine sheep's heads, calves' heads, and
brocks' heads, of which there's no want in that country.

O' Thursdays they guzzled down seven sorts of porridge, not forgetting
mustard.

O' Fridays they munched nothing but services or sorb-apples; neither were
these full ripe, as I guessed by their complexion.

O' Saturdays they gnawed bones; not that they were poor or needy, for every
mother's son of them had a very good fat belly-benefice.

As for their drink, 'twas an antifortunal; thus they called I don't know
what sort of a liquor of the place.

When they wanted to eat or drink, they turned down the back-points or flaps
of their cowls forwards below their chins, and that served 'em instead of
gorgets or slabbering-bibs.

When they had well dined, they prayed rarely all in quavers and shakes; and
the rest of the day, expecting the day of judgment, they were taken up with
acts of charity, and particularly--

O' Sundays, rubbers at cuffs.

O' Mondays, lending each other flirts and fillips on the nose.

O' Tuesdays, clapperclawing one another.

O' Wednesdays, sniting and fly-flapping.

O' Thursdays, worming and pumping.

O' Fridays, tickling.

O' Saturdays, jerking and firking one another.

Such was their diet when they resided in the convent, and if the prior of
the monk-house sent any of them abroad, then they were strictly enjoined
neither to touch nor eat any manner of fish as long as they were on sea or
rivers, and to abstain from all manner of flesh whenever they were at land,
that everyone might be convinced that, while they enjoyed the object, they
denied themselves the