With all this, however, they gave me something to eat, for I was almost dying with hunger, and at the end of fourteen or fifteen days I was able to rise from my bed without danger, though not even then without hunger, and only half cured. The day after I got up my worthy and truly respectable master took my hand, and, opening the door, put me into the street, saying, “Lazaro, from this day look out for yourself; seek another master, and fare you well. No one will ever doubt that you have served a blind man, but for me, I do not require so diligent nor so clever a servant.” Then shaking me off, as though I was in league with the Evil One, he went back into his house and shut the door.
Hurtado de Mendoza. Trans. Roscoe.
A TAILOR WOULD FAIN LEARN OF GUZMAN TO WRITE HIS NAME, OR TO MAKE FIRMA, OR MARK, AND THE REASON WHY.
It was my hap one day to bear in my basket, which I brought from the Shambles, a quarter of Mutton, for a certain Hosier, or Gentleman Tailor. I had by chance at that time about me, certain old Coplas, or Ballads, which in a kind of broken tune still, as I read this or t’other line, I fell a-singing, as I went along. My good Master having (as it should seem) listened unto me, looked back on the sudden, and smiling, said—
“How now, my tattered Rascal, a pox take you for a ragga-muffin. Can you read, you Rogue?”
“Yes, marry, can I, Sir,” quoth I. “I thank God I can read reasonable well, but my writing is better than my reading.”
“Sayst thou so, Boy?”
And with that he entreated me, that I would teach him to write his name, or to make some mark that might serve for a subscription, or undersigning. He cared not which, for either would serve his turn.
“I pray, Sir,” said I, “what good can this do you? What can you benefit yourself, by having learnt to make a bare mark and no more? Methinks you should have no great use for that alone, unless you could write too.”
“Yes, marry, have I, Sir,” quoth he, “for I have much work goes through these hands, of such and such great men, I make all the clothes their children wear” (and there, by the way, he reckons me up a beadroll of these and these Lords) “and therefore I would very fain, if I knew how, learn to write my Name, or to make my Mark, that if occasion were offered I might not be taken for an Ass, and say like a fool as I am when I am called to subscribe, ‘Indeed, Sir, you must pardon me, I cannot write.’”