Au. Nay, if you’d please me, let it be with Diogenes’s Fare.

Ch. You may depend upon it, I will treat you with a Platonick Supper, in which you shall have a great many learned Stories, and but a little Meat, the Pleasure of which shall last till the next Day:  whereas they that have been nobly entertain’d, enjoy perhaps a little Pleasure that Day, but the next are troubled with the Head-ach, and Sickness at the Stomach.  He that supp’d with Plato, had one Pleasure from the easy Preparation, and Philosopher’s Stories; and another the next Day, that his Head did not ach, and that his Stomach was not sick, and so had a good Dinner of the sauce of last Night’s Supper.

Au. I like it very well, let it be as you have said.

Ch. Do you see that you leave all your Cares and melancholy Airs at Home, and bring nothing hither but Jokes and Merriment; and as Juvenal says,

  Protenus ante meum, quicquid dolet, exue limen.

  Lay all that troubles you down before my Door, before you come into it._

Au. What?  Would you have me bring no Learning along with me?  I will bring my Muses with me, unless you think it not convenient.

Ch. Shut up your ill-natured Muses at Home with your Business, but bring your good-natured Muses, all your witty Jests, your By-words, your Banters, your Pleasantries, your pretty Sayings, and all your Ridiculosities along with you.

Au. I’ll do as you bid me; put on all my best Looks.  We’ll be merry Fellows.  We’ll laugh our Bellies full.  We’ll make much of ourselves.  We’ll feast jovially.  We’ll play the Epicureans.  We’ll set a good Face on’t, and be boon Blades.  These are fine Phrases of clownish Fellows that have a peculiar Way of speaking to themselves.

Ch. Where are you going so fast?

Au. To my Son’s in Law.

Ch. What do you do there?  Why thither?  What do you with him?

Au. I hear there is Disturbance among them; I am going to make them Friends again, to bring them to an Agreement; to make Peace among them.

Ch. You do very well, though I believe they don’t want you; for they will make the Matter up better among themselves.

Au. Perhaps there is a Cessation of Arms, and the Peace is to be concluded at Night.  But have you any Thing else to say to me?

Ch. I will send my Boy to call you.

Au. When you please.  I shall be at Home.  Farewell.

Ch. I wish you well.  See that you be here by five a-Clock.  Soho Peter, call Austin to Supper, who you know promised to come to Supper with me to Day.

Pe. Soho!  Poet, God bless you, Supper has been ready this good While, and my Master stays for you at Home, you may come when you will.

Au. I come this Minute.