CHRIST. Ay, ay; such wise men as you come to beg at such fools’ doors as we be.

AUT.  Thou shutt’st thy door; how should we beg of thee? 
No alms but thy sink carries from thy house.

WILL SUM.  And I can tell you that’s as plentiful alms for the plague as the Sheriff’s tub to them of Newgate.

AUT.  For feast thou keepest none; cankers thou feed’st. 
The worms will curse thy flesh another day,
Because it yieldeth them no fatter prey.

CHRIST. What worms do another day, I care not, but I’ll be sworn upon a whole kilderkin of single beer, I will not have a worm-eaten nose, like a pursuivant, while I live.  Feasts are but puffing up of the flesh, the purveyors for diseases; travel, cost, time, ill-spent.  O, it were a trim thing to send, as the Romans did, round about the world for provision for one banquet.  I must rig ships to Samos for peacocks; to Paphos for pigeons; to Austria for oysters; to Phasis for pheasants; to Arabia for phoenixes; to Meander for swans; to the Orcades for geese; to Phrygia for woodcocks; to Malta for cranes; to the Isle of Man for puffins; to Ambracia for goats; to Tartole for lampreys; to Egypt for dates; to Spain for chestnuts—­and all for one feast.

WILL SUM.  O sir, you need not:  you may buy them at London better cheap.

CHRIST. Liberalitas liberalitate perit; Love me little, and love me long[131]:  our feet must have wherewithal to feed the stones:  our backs, walls of wool to keep out the cold that besiegeth our warm blood; our doors must have bars, our doublets must have buttons.  Item, for an old sword to scrape the stones before the door with; three halfpence for stitching a wooden tankard that was burst.  These water-bearers will empty the conduit and a man’s coffers at once.  Not a porter that brings a man a letter but will have his penny.  I am afraid to keep past one or two servants, lest (hungry knaves) they should rob me; and those I keep (I warrant) I do not pamper up too lusty.  I keep them under with red herring and poor John all the year long.  I have dammed up all my chimneys for fear (though I burn nothing but small coal) my house should be set on fire with the smoke.  I will not dine[132] but once in a dozen year, when there is a great rot of sheep, and I know not what to do with them; I keep open house for all the beggars in some of my out-yards:  marry, they must bring bread with them; I am no baker.

WILL SUM.  As good men as you, and have thought it no scorn to serve their ’prenticeships on the pillory.

SUM.  Winter, is this thy son?  Hear’st how he talks?

WIN.  I am his father, therefore may not speak,
But otherwise I could excuse his fault.

SUM.  Christmas, I tell thee plain, thou art a snudge[133],
And were’t not that we love thy father well,
Thou shouldst have felt what ’longs to avarice. 
It is the honour of nobility
To keep high-days and solemn festivals;
Then to set their magnificence to view,
To frolic open with their favourites,
And use their neighbours with all courtesy;
When thou in hugger-mugger[134] spend’st thy wealth. 
Amend thy manners, breathe thy rusty gold;
Bounty will win thee love, when thou art old.