A Bowl Alley.
A bowl alley is the place where there are three things thrown away besides bowls—to wit, time, money, and curses, and the last ten for one. The best sport in it is the gamesters, and he enjoys it that looks on and bets not. It is the school of wrangling, and worse than the schools, for men will cavil here for a hair's breadth, and make a stir where a straw would end the controversy. No antic screws men's bodies into such strange flexures, and you would think them here senseless, to speak sense to their bowl, and put their trust in entreaties for a good cast. It is the best discovery of humours, especially in the losers, where you have fine variety of impatience, whilst some fret, some rail, some swear, and others more ridiculously comfort themselves with philosophy. To give you the moral of it, it is the emblem of the world, or the world's ambition; where most are short, or over, or wide, or wrong-biassed, and some few justle in to the mistress of fortune. And it is here as in the court, where the nearest are most spited, and all blows aimed at the toucher.
A Handsome Hostess.
A handsome hostess is the fairer commendation of an inn, above the fair sign, or fair lodgings. She is the loadstone that attracts men of iron, gallants and roarers, where they cleave sometimes long, and are not easily got off. Her lips are your welcome, and your entertainment her company, which is put into the reckoning too, and is the dearest parcel in it. No citizen's wife is demurer than she at the first greeting, nor draws in her mouth with a chaster simper; but you may be more familiar without distaste, and she does not startle at a loose jest. She is the confusion of a pottle of sack more than would have been spent elsewhere, and her little jugs are accepted to have her kiss excuse them. She may be an honest woman, but is not believed so in her parish, and no man is a greater infidel in it than her husband.
A Poor Fiddler.
A poor fiddler is a man and a fiddle out of case, and he in worse case than his fiddle. One that rubs two sticks together (as the Indians strike fire), and rubs a poor living out of it; partly from this, and partly from your charity, which is more in the hearing than giving him, for he sells nothing dearer than to be gone. He is just so many strings above a beggar, though he have but two; and yet he begs too. Hunger is the greatest pain he takes, except a broken head sometimes. Otherwise his life is so many fits of mirth, and 'tis some mirth to see him. A good feast shall draw him five miles by the nose, and you shall track him again by the scent. His other pilgrimages are fairs and good houses, where his devotion is great to the Christmas; and no man loves good times better. He is in league with the tapsters for the worshipful of the inn, whom he torments next morning with his art, and has their names more perfect than their men. A new song is better to him than a new jacket, especially if it be lewd, which he calls merry; and hates naturally the puritan, as an enemy to this mirth. A country wedding and Whitsun-ale are the two main places he domineers in, where he goes for a musician, and overlooks the bagpipe. The rest of him is drunk, and in the stocks.
A Coward.