I will make no more orations, shall draw on these tragical conclusions. And I begin now to think, that by a spice of collateral justice, Adam Overdo deserved this beating; for I, the said Adam, was one cause why the purse was lost; and my wife's brother's purse too, which they know not of yet. But I shall make very good mirth with it at supper, that will be the sport, and put my little friend, master Humphrey Waspe's choler quite out of countenance: when, sitting at the upper end of my table, as I use, and drinking to my brother Cokes, and mistress Alice Overdo, as I will, my wife, for their good affection to old Bradley, I deliver to them, it was I that was cudgeled, and shew them the marks. To see what bad events may peep out o' the tail of good purposes! the care I had of that civil young man I took fancy to this morning, drew me to that exhortation, which drew the company indeed; which drew the cut-purse; which drew the money; which drew my brother Cokes his loss; which drew on Waspe's anger; which drew on my beating: a pretty gradation! and they shall have it in their dish, i'faith, at night for fruit; I love to be merry at my table. I had thought once, at one special blow he gave me, to have revealed myself; but then I remembered that a wise man, and who is ever so great a part of the commonwealth in himself, for no particular disaster ought to abandon a public good design. The husbandman ought not, for one unthankful year, to forsake the plough; the shepherd ought not, for one scabbed sheep, to throw by his tar-box; the pilot ought not, for one leak in the poop, to quit the helm; nor the alderman ought not, for one custard more at a meal, to give up his cloke; the constable ought not to break his staff, and forswear the watch, for one roaring night; nor the piper of the parish, _ut parvis componere magna solebam_, to put up his pipes for one rainy Sunday. These are certain knocking conclusions; out of which, I am resolved, come what come can, come beating, come imprisonment, come infamy, come banishment, nay, come the rack, come the hurdle, I will not discover who I am, till my due time; and yet still, all shall be, as I said ever, in justice name, and the king's, and for the commonwealth.

Over Monologue from Bartholomew Fair

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