And though this be little toward those great
enterprises and happenings I shall presently shew, I set it down
for the behoof of such malapert wights as must needs gird at a man
of spirit and action--and yet, in sooth, know not their own
letters.
So to my tale. There was a great frost when my Lord bade me follow
him to the water gate near our lodgings in the Strand. When we
reached it we were amazed to see that the Thames was frozen over
and many citizens disporting themselves on the ice--the like of
which no man had seen before. There were fires built thereon, and
many ships and barges were stuck hard and fast, and my Lord thought
it vastly pretty that the people were walking under their bows and
cabbin windows and climbing of their sides like mermen, but I,
being a plain, blunt man, had no joy in such idlenesse, deeming it
better that in these times of pith and enterprise they should be
more seemly employed. My Lord, because of one or two misadventures
by reason of the slipperiness of the ice, was fain to go by London
Bridge, which we did; my Lord as suited his humor ruffling the
staid citizens as he passed or peering under the hoods of their
wives and daughters--as became a young gallant of the time. I,
being a plain, blunt man, assisted in no such folly, but contented
myself, when they complayned to me, with damning their souls for
greasy interfering varlets.
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