“This day I rode to the Yeld (Guild) Hall to sit on the commission for strangers and in the lower end of Cheapside towards Poole’s (St. Paul’s) there stood a man and a woman both aged persons with papers upon their heads. The man was keeper of the conduit there. These two lewd people in the night entered into the Conduit and washed themselves, et ad hunc et ibidem turpiter exoneraverunt ventres eorum, etc.
This day Mr. Recorder surrendered his office. The lot is now to be cast between Mr. Serjeant Drew and one Mr. Fleming of Lincoln’s Inn. This present Saturday.
Your good Lordship’s most bounden
W. Fletewoode.”
This picture of the old Recorder riding out to the Guild Hall for his last sitting and reporting to my Lord the common sights of the City brings back to us a real picture of his days. So that we can almost feel that we are living on “this present Saturday” and regretting with all good citizens that “this day Mr. Recorder surrendered his office.”
THE FUNNIEST THING I EVER SAW.
“Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature.”
—Sir Philip Sidney.
To ask one to write to such a title is a challenge to be taken up, but one does not expect to vanquish the challenger. The funniest thing I ever saw would not make you laugh because you never saw it and if I had the skill to make you see it probably you would not think it funny. Then again the older you grow the few funnier things you see. What a lot of laughter there was thirty or forty years ago. Whither has it fled? In childhood nearly every discomfort or disaster to others is food for laughter whilst your own little troubles are tragedies fit for tears.