was shoulder-knots; no approaching the ladies ruelles without the quota of shoulder-knots. That fellow, cries one, has no soul; where is his shoulder-knot? Our three brethren soon discovered their want by sad experience, meeting in their walks with forty mortifications and indignities. If they went to the playhouse, the door-keeper showed them into the twelvepenny gallery. If they called a boat, says a waterman, I am first sculler. If they stepped to the Rose to take a bottle, the drawer would cry, Friend, we sell no ale. If they went to visit a lady, a footman met them at the door, with, Pray send up your message. In this unhappy case they went immediately to consult their father's will, read it over and over, but not a word of the shoulder-knot: what should they do? what temper should they find? obedience was absolutely necessary, and yet shoulder-knots appeared extremely requisite. After much thought, one of the brothers, who happened to be more book-learned than the other two, said, he had found an expedient. It is true, said he, there is nothing here in this will, totidem verbis, making mention of shoulder-knots: but I dare conjecture, we may find them inclusive, or, totidem syllabis. This distinction
begins his pranks with adding a shoulder-knot to his coat. W. Wotton.
His description of the cloth, of which the coat was made, has a farther meaning than the words may seem to import; "The coats their father had left them, were of very good cloth, and besides, so neatly sown, you would swear they were all of a piece; but at the same time very plain, with little or no ornament." This is the distinguishing character of the christian religion: christiana religio absoluta & simplex, was Ammianus Marcellinus's description of it, who was himself a heathen. W. Wotton.
