happenings, and no more. I am a plain, blunt man--mayhap rude of
speech should occasion warrant---so let them who require the
exactness of a scrivener or a pedagogue go elsewhere for their
entertainment and be hanged to them!

Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who misuse the
English speech, and, being foolishly led by the hasty custom of
scriveners and printers to write the letters "T" and "H" joined
together, which resembleth a "Y," do incontinently jump to the
conclusion the THE is pronounced "Ye,"--the like of which I never
heard in all England. And though this be little toward those great
enterprises and happenings I shall presently shew, I set it down
for the behoof of such malapert wights as must needs gird at a man
of spirit and action--and yet, in sooth, know not their own
letters.

So to my tale. There was a great frost when my Lord bade me follow
him to the water gate near our lodgings in the Strand. When we
reached it we were amazed to see that the Thames was frozen over
and many citizens disporting themselves on the ice--the like of
which no man had seen before. There were fires built thereon, and
many ships and barges were stuck hard and fast, and my Lord thought
it vastly pretty that the people were walking under their bows and
cabbin windows and climbing of their sides like mermen, but I,
being a plain, blunt man, had no joy in such idlenesse, deeming it
better that in these times of pith and enterprise they should be
more seemly employed. My Lord, because of one or two misadventures
by reason of the slipperiness of the ice, was fain to go by London
Bridge, which we did; my Lord as suited his humor ruffling the
staid citizens as he passed or peering under the hoods of their