"If thou be slow to speake, as one I knew,
Thou wouldst assure thy selfe my counsels true;
Hee (too late) finding her upon her knees
In Church, where yet her husbands coorse she sees,
Hearing the Sermon at his funerall,
Longing to behold his buriall,
This sutor being toucht with inward love,
Approached neare his lovely sute to move,
Then stooping downe he whispered in her eare
Saying he bore her love, as might appeare,
In that so soone he shewed his love unto her,
Before any else did app[r]och to woo her,
Alass (said she) your labour is in vaine,
Last night a husband I did entertaine."
--_Uncasing of Machivils Instructions to his Sonne_, 1612,
Sign. C 3. Stories of this kind are of very common occurrence in the
modern collections of facetiae.
P. 23. "When Davie Diker diggs, and dallies not,
When smithes shoo horses, as they would be shod,
_When millers toll not with a golden thumbe_."
--_The Steel Glas, a Satyre_, by George Gascoigne, Esquire (1576), Sign.
H 3 verso.
A writer in the _Retrospective Review_, New Series, ii. 326, states that
this story of the "Miller with the golden thumb" "is still (1854) a
favourite in Yorkshire."
P. 30. _Stumble at a Straw, &c._--This proverb is quoted in _Machivils
Instructions to his Sonne_, 1613, p. 16.