that of hawking, and it infinitely surpassed in interest any rural sport
whatever in our day, under any circumstances. Hawks trained to do the
work of fowling-pieces were therefore greater pets than any dogs that
now are the company of sportsmen. A lady without a falcon on her wrist,
when mounted on her richly caparisoned steed for a morning's sport, was
very rare indeed.

An instructive feature of the "Canterbury Tales" is the view which
Chaucer gives us of the food and houses and dresses of the people. "In
the Nonne's Prestes' Tale we see the cottage and manner of life of a
poor widow." She has three daughters, three pigs, three oxen, and a
sheep. Her house had only two rooms,--an eating-room, which also served
for a kitchen and sitting-room, and a bower or bedchamber,--both
without a chimney, with holes pierced to let in the light. The table
was a board put upon trestles, to be removed when the meal of black
bread and milk, and perchance an egg with bacon, was over. The three
slept without sheets or blankets on a rude bed, covered only with their
ordinary day-clothes. Their kitchen utensils were a brass pot or two for
boiling, a few wooden platters, an iron candlestick, and a knife or two;
while the furniture was composed of two or three chairs and stools, with
a frame in the wall, with shelves, for clothes and utensils. The
manciple and the cook of the company seem to indicate that living among
the well-to-do classes was a very generous and a very serious part of
life, on which a high estimate was placed, since food in any variety,
though plentiful at times, was not always to be had, and therefore
precarious. "Guests at table were paired, and ate, every pair, out of
the same plate or off the same trencher." But the bill of fare at a
franklin's feast would be deemed anything but poor, even in our
times,--"bacon and pea-soup, oysters, fish, stewed beef, chickens,
capons, roast goose, pig, veal, lamb, kid, pigeon, with custard, apples