Page:Elizabethan & Jacobean Pamphlets.djvu/253

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Thomas Dekker
233


CHAPTER III

How a yong Gallant should warme himself by the fire; how attire himself: The description of a mans head: the praise of long haire.

But if (as it often happens vnlesse the yeare catch the sweating sicknesse) the morning, like charity waxing cold, thrust his frosty fingers into thy bosome, pinching thee black and blew (with her nailes made of yce) like an inuisible goblin, so that thy teeth (as if thou wert singing prick-song) stand coldly quauering in thy head, and leap vp and downe like the nimble Iackes of a paire of Virginals: be then as swift as a whirle-winde, and as boystrous in tossing all thy cloathes in a rude heape together: With which bundle filling thine armes, steppe brauely forth, crying: Room, what a coyle keepe you about the fire? The more are set round about it, the more is thy commendation, if thou either bluntly ridest ouer their shoulders, or tumblest aside their stooles to creepe into the chimney-corner: there toast thy body, till thy scorched skinne be speckled all ouer, being staind with more motley colours then are to be seene on the right side of the rainebow.

Neither shall it be fit for the state of thy health, to put on thy Apparell, till by sitting in that hot-