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Everything brought them as it were before my eyes; and as the door of the dining-room opened, I almost expected to hear the feeble voice of Master Silence quavering forth his favorite ditty: "Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all, And welcome merry Shrove-tide!"

The Shrove-tide feast is ended, and the days of fasting and of prayer have hushed the sounds of merriment and song. Of all the sports and pastimes of old England, archery was the most renowned, and many a hard-fought victory has been gained through the skill which our English archers acquired in the use of their famous bows.

Everything brought them as it were before my eyes, and as the door of the dining-room opened I almost expected to hear the feeble voice of Master Silence quavering forth his favorite ditty: "'Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all, And welcome merry Shrove-tide!"

To the Hall, and there find the boys' verses, "De Peste;" it being their custom to make verses at Shrove-tide. I read several, and very good they were; better, I think, than ever I made when I was a boy, and in rolls as long and longer than the whole Hall, by much. Here is a picture of Venice hung up, and a monument made of Sir H. Wotton's giving it to the College.

April Fool swore they had exchanged conditions: but Good Friday was observed to look extremely grave; and Sunday held her fan before her face, that she might not be seen to smile. Shrove-tide, Lord Mayor's Day, and April Fool, next joined in a glee Which is the properest day to drink? in which all the Days chiming in, made a merry burden. They next fell to quibbles and conundrums.

I have seen a man keel-hauled at sea, and brought up on the other side, his face all larded with barnacles like a Shrove-tide capon. I stood by when that poor mad wretch Damiens was pulled to pieces by horses in the Grève. I have seen what the plague could do in the galleys at Marseilles. Death and I have been boon companions and bedfellows.

Here they do not catch at those little dirty opportunities of saying any ill-natured thing they know of you, do not abuse you because they may, or talk gross bawdy to a woman of quality. I found the other day, by a play of Etheridge's, that we have had a sort of Carnival even since the Reformation; 'tis in She would if She could, they talk of going a-mumming in Shrove-tide.

They kept up the Christmas carol, sent true love-knots on Valentine morning, eat pancakes on Shrove-tide, shewed their wit on the first of April, and religiously cracked nuts on Michaelmas eve.

Valentine was a priest and martyr in Italy in the third century, and had nothing to do with the popular commemoration of the day. Now we come to the diversions of Shrove-tide, which immediately precedes the Lenten Fast.

The school good, and the custom pretty of boys cutting their names in the struts of the window when they go to Cambridge, by which many a one hath lived to see himself Provost and Fellow, that had his name in the window standing. To the Hall, and there find the boys' verses, "De Peste;" it being their custom to make verses at Shrove-tide.