And then, rules
To give and take the lie by.
KAS. How! to take it?
FACE. Yes, in oblique he'll shew you, or in circle;
But never in diameter. The whole town
Study his theorems, and dispute them ordinarily
At the eating academies.
KAS. But does he teach
Living by the wits too?
FACE. Anything whatever.
You cannot think that subtlety, but he reads it.
He made me a captain. I was a stark pimp,
Just of your standing, 'fore I met with him;
It is not two months since. I'll tell you his method:
First, he will enter you at some ordinary.
KAS. No, I'll not come there: you shall pardon me.
FACE. For why, sir?
KAS. There's gaming there, and tricks.
FACE. Why, would you be
A gallant, and not game?
KAS. Ay, 'twill spend a man.
FACE. Spend you! it will repair you when you are spent:
How do they live by their wits there, that have vented
Six times your fortunes?
KAS. What, three thousand a-year!
FACE. Ay, forty thousand.
KAS. Are there such?
FACE. Ay, sir,
And gallants yet. Here's a young gentleman
Is born to nothing, --
[POINTS TO DAPPER.]
forty marks a year,
Which I count nothing: -- he is to be initiated,
And have a fly of the doctor. He will win you,
By unresistible luck, within this fortnight,
Enough to buy a barony. They will set him
Upmost, at the groom porter's, all the Christmas:
And for the whole year through, at every place,
Where there is play, present him with the chair;
The best attendance, the best drink; sometimes
Two glasses of Canary, and pay nothing;
The purest linen, and the sharpest knife,
The partridge next his trencher: and somewhere
The dainty bed, in private, with the dainty.
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