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mortifications and indignities. If they went to the playhouse, the
doorkeeper showed them into the twelve-penny gallery. If they
called a boat, says a waterman, "I am first sculler." If they
stepped into the "Rose" to take a bottle, the drawer would cry,
"Friend, we sell no ale." If they went to visit a lady, a footman
met them at the door with "Pray, send up your message." In this
unhappy case they went immediately to consult their father's will,
read it over and over, but not a word of the shoulder-knot. What
should they do? What temper should they find? Obedience was
absolutely necessary, and yet shoulder-knots appeared extremely
requisite. After much thought, one of the brothers, who happened to
be more book-learned than the other two, said he had found an
expedient. "It is true," said he, "there is nothing here in this
will, totidem verbis, making mention of shoulder-knots, but I dare
conjecture we may find them inclusive, or totidem syllabis." This
distinction was immediately approved by all; and so they fell again
to examine the will. But their evil star had so directed the matter
that the first syllable was not to be found in the whole writing;
upon which disappointment, he who found the former evasion took
heart, and said, "Brothers, there is yet hopes; for though we cannot
find them totidem verbis nor totidem syllabis, I dare engage we
shall make them out tertio modo or totidem literis." This discovery
was also highly commended, upon which they fell once more to the
scrutiny, and soon picked out S, H, O, U, L, D, E, R, when the same
planet, enemy to their repose, had wonderfully contrived that a K
was not to be found. Here was a weighty difficulty! But the
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.

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