distinguishing brother (for whom we shall hereafter find a name),
now his hand was in, proved by a very good argument that K was a
modern illegitimate letter, unknown to the learned ages, nor
anywhere to be found in ancient manuscripts. "It is true," said he,
"the word Calendae, had in Q. V. C. {76} been sometimes writ with a
K, but erroneously, for in the best copies it is ever spelt with a
C; and by consequence it was a gross mistake in our language to
spell 'knot' with a K," but that from henceforward he would take
care it should be writ with a C. Upon this all further difficulty
vanished; shoulder-knots were made clearly out to be jure paterno,
and our three gentlemen swaggered with as large and as flaunting
ones as the best.

But as human happiness is of a very short duration, so in those days
were human fashions, upon which it entirely depends. Shoulder-knots
had their time, and we must now imagine them in their decline, for a
certain lord came just from Paris with fifty yards of gold lace upon
his coat, exactly trimmed after the court fashion of that month. In
two days all mankind appeared closed up in bars of gold lace.
Whoever durst peep abroad without his complement of gold lace was as
scandalous as a ----, and as ill received among the women. What
should our three knights do in this momentous affair? They had
sufficiently strained a point already in the affair of shoulder-
knots. Upon recourse to the will, nothing appeared there but altum
silentium. That of the shoulder-knots was a loose, flying,
circumstantial point, but this of gold lace seemed too considerable
an alteration without better warrant. It did aliquo modo essentiae
adhaerere, and therefore required a positive precept. But about
this time it fell out that the learned brother aforesaid had read
"Aristotelis Dialectica," and especially that wonderful piece de