t tongs steept
in pitch; wearing a fine maske of silk with a mouth piece of aromatic
stuff--by reason of which acts of hardihood and courage I was
miraculously preserved. This much I shall say as to the time of these
happenings, and no more. I am a plain, blunt man--mayhap rude of
speech should occasion warrant---so let them who require the exactness
of a scrivener or a pedagogue go elsewhere for their entertainment and
be hanged to them!

Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who misuse the
English speech, and, being foolishly led by the hasty custom of
scriveners and printers to write the letters "T" and "H" joined
together, which resembleth a "Y," do incontinently jump to the
conclusion the THE is pronounced "Ye,"--the like of which I never heard
in all England. And though this be little toward those great
enterprises and happenings I shall presently shew, I set it down for
the behoof of such malapert wights as must needs gird at a man of
spirit and action--and yet, in sooth, know not their own letters.

So to my tale. There was a great frost when my Lord bade me follow him
to the water gate near our lodgings in the Strand. When we reached it
we were amazed to see that the Thames was frozen over and many citizens
disporting themselves on the ice--the like of which no man had seen
before. There were fires built thereon, and many ships and barges were
stuck hard and fast, and my Lord thought it vastly pretty that the
people were walking under their bows and cabbin windows and climbing of
their sides like mermen, but I, being a plain, blunt man, had no joy in
such idlenesse, deeming it better that in these times of pith and
enterprise they should be more seemly employed. My Lord, because of
one or two misadventures by reason of the slipperiness of the ice, was
fain to go by London Bridge, which we did; my Lord as suited his humor
ruffling the staid citizens as he passed or peering under the hoods of
their wives and daughters--as became a young gallant of the time. I,
being a plain, blunt man, assisted in no such folly, but contented
myself, when they complayned to me, with damning their souls for greasy
interfering varlets. For I shall now make no scruple in declaring that
my Lord was the most noble Earl of Southampton, being withheld from so
saying before through very plainness and bluntness, desiring as a
simple yeoman to make no boast of serving a man of so high quality.

We fared on over Bank