ends have fallen upon some poor housekeepers that have come thither. About the doors, multitudes still are crowding; above, the room is continually filled with people. Every mouth is bawling out for lots, and every hand thrust out to snatch them. Both hands are lifted up, the one to deliver the condemned shillings, the other to receive the papers of life and death. And when the papers, which are rolled up like wafers, are paid for; lo! what praying is there in every corner that GOD would, if it be His will, send them good fortune. How gingerly do they open their twelvepenny commodity! How leisurely, with what gaping of the mouth, with what licking of the lips, as though they felt sweetness in it before they tasted it! How the standers by encourage him that hath drawn to open boldly, as if it were to venture upon the mouth of a cannon: and with what strange passions and pantings does he turn over his waste papers? But when he finds within but a pale piece of paper, Lord! how he swears at his own folly, curses the Frenchmen, and cries "A plague on the house" and wishes all the plate were molten and poured down the throats of them that own it. Yet when he hath emptied his bosom of all this bitterness, the very casting of his eye upon a goodly fair bason of silver so sweetens the remembrance of his lost money, that to it he falls again; and never gives over so long as he can make any shift for the other shilling. And thus do a number of poor men labour with a kind of greediness to beggar themselves.
Coun. But amongst all these land rovers, have none of them the luck of men of war to win rich prizes?
Cit. Yes, some do: and the making of one is the undoing of a hundred: for the sight of a standing bowl being borne openly away in triumph by some poor fellow, so sets all their teeth on edge that are the gazers on, that many are almost mad till they have sold their pewter, in hope to change it into a cupboard of silver plate. And so far does this frenzy lead some, especially the baser sort of people, that this man pawns his cloak; that man his holiday breeches; this woman sell her brass; that gossip makes away with her linen: and all these streams meet in the end in one river. These do all suffer shipwreck, and the sea, swallows the spoil. The one goes home crying and cursing, the other stands still tickling
