Mercury upon a rope from
the top of a church-steeple, every one charged with a mouthful of
'coming! coming!' This sudden clatter at our appearance so
surprised me that I looked as silly as a bumpkin translated from
the plough-tail to the play-house, when it rains fire in the
tempest, or when Don John's at dinner with the subterranean
assembly of terrible hobgoblins. He that got the start and first
approached us of these greyhound-footed emissaries, desir'd us to
walk up, telling my companion his friends were above; then with a
hop, stride and jump, ascended the stair-head before us, and from
thence conducted us to a spacious room, where about a dozen of my
schoolfellow's acquaintances were ready to receive us. Upon our
entrance they all started up, and on a suddain screwed themselves
into so many antick postures, that had I not seen them first erect,
I should have query'd with myself, whether I was fallen into the
company of men or monkeys.

"This academical fit of riggling agility was almost over before I
rightly understood the meaning on't, and found at last they were
only showing one another how many sorts of apes' gestures and fops'
cringes had been invented since the French dancing-masters
undertook to teach our English gentry to make scaramouches of
themselves; and how to entertain their poor friends, and pacifie
their needy creditors with compliments and congies. When every
person with abundance of pains had shown the ultimate of his
breeding, contending about a quarter of an hour who should sit down
first, as if we waited the coming of some herauld to fix us in our
proper places, which with much difficulty being at last agreed on,
we proceed to a whet of old hock to sharpen our appetites to our
approaching dinner; though I confess my stomach was as keen already
as a greyhound's to his supper after a day's coursing, or a miserly
livery-man's, who had fasted three days to prepare himself for a
Lord Mayor's feast. The honest cook gave us no leisure to tire our
appetites by a tedious expectancy; for in a little time the cloth
was laid, and our first course was ushered up by the _dominus
factotum_ in great order to the table, which consisted of two
calves'-heads and a couple of geese. I could not but laugh in my
conceit to think with what j