A street before the meeting-house of the Family of Love.
Enter Mistress Purge and Club before her with a link.
MISTRESS PURGE
Fie, fie, Club, go a’ t’other side the way, thou collowest me and my ruff; thou wilt make me an unclean member i’ the congregation.
CLUB
If you be unclean, mistress, you may pure yourself; you have my master’s ware at your commandment; but what am I then, that does all the drudgery in your house?
MISTRESS PURGE
Th’ art born to’t; why, boy, I can show thy indentures; thou givest no other milk. We know how to use all i’ their kind.
CLUB
You’re my better in bark and rine, but in pith and substance I may compare with you. You’re above me in flesh, mistress, and there’s your boast; but in my t’other part we are all one before God.
Enter Dryfat.
MISTRESS PURGE
All one with me? Dost thou swear too? Why then, up and ride!
DRYFAT
Whither away, Mistress Purge?
MISTRESS PURGE
To the Family, Master Dryfat, to our exercise.
DRYFAT
What, by night?
MISTRESS PURGE
O Lord, ay, sir, with the candles out too; we fructify best i’ th’ dark. The glance of the eye is a great matter; it leads us to other objects besides the right.
DRYFAT
Indeed, I think we perform those functions best when we are not thrall to the fetters of the body.
MISTRESS PURGE
The fetters of the body? What call you them?
DRYFAT
The organs of the body, as some term them.
MISTRESS PURGE
Organs? Fie, fie, they have a most abominable squeaking sound in mine ears; they edify not a whit, I detest ‘em. I hope my body has no organs.
DRYFAT
To speak more familiarly, Mistress Purge, they are the senses: the sight, hearing, smelling, taste and feeling.
MISTRESS PURGE
Ay, marry. Marry, said I? Lord, what a word’s that in my mouth. You speak now, Master Dryfat, but yet let me tell you where you err too: this feeling I will prove to be neither organ nor fetter; it is a thing — a sense did you call it?
DRYFAT
Ay, a sense.
MISTRESS PURGE
Why then, a sense let it be. I say it is that we cannot be without: for, as I take it, it is a part belonging to understanding; understanding, you know, lifteth up the mind from earth; if the mind be lift up, you know the body goes with it. Also it descends into the conscience, and there tickles us with our works and doings, so that we make singular use of feeling.
DRYFAT
And not of the rest?
MISTRESS PURGE
Not at that time; therefore we hold it not amiss to put out the candles, for the soul sees best i’ th’ dark.
DRYFAT
You come to me now, Mistress Purge.
[Enter Purge, who overhears them.]
MISTRESS PURGE
Nay, I will come to you else, Master Dryfat. These senses, as you term them, are of much efficacy in carnal mixtures; that is, when we crowd and thrust a man and a woman together.
PURGE
[Aside] What, so close at it? I thought this was one end of your exercise. Byrlady, I think there is small profit in this. I’ll wink no more, for I am now tickled with a conceit that it is a scurvy thing to be a cuckold .
DRYFAT
I commend this zeal in you, Mistress Purge; I desire much to be of your society.
MISTRESS PURGE
Do you indeed? Blessing on your heart. Are you upright in your dealings?
DRYFAT
Yes, I do love to stand to any thing I do, though I lose by it; in truth, I deal but too truly for this world. You shall hear how far I am entered in the right way already. First, I live in charity and give small alms to such as be not of the right sect; I take under twenty i’ th’ hundred, nor no forfeiture of bonds unless the law tell my conscience I may do’t; I set no pot on a’ Sundays, but feed on cold meat dressed a’ Saturdays; I keep no holydays nor fasts, but eat most flesh o’ Fridays of all days i’ the week; I do use to say inspired graces able to starve a wicked man with length; I have Aminadabs and Abrahams to my godsons, and I chide them when they ask me blessing; and I do hate the red letter more than I follow the written verity.
PURGE
[Aside] Here’s clergy.
MISTRESS PURGE
These are the rudiments indeed, Master Dryfat.
DRYFAT
Nay, I can tell you I am, or will be, of the right stamp.
PURGE
[Aside] A pox o’ your stamp.
MISTRESS PURGE
Then learn the word for your admittance, and you will be much made on by the congregation.
DRYFAT
Ay, the word, good Mistress Purge.
MISTRESS PURGE
A Brother in the Family.
DRYFAT
Enough, I have my lesson.
PURGE
[Aside] So have I mine: a Brother in the Family; I must be a Familist today. I’ll follow this gear while ’tis on foot, i’faith.
MISTRESS PURGE
Then shore up your eyes, and lead the way to the goodliest people that ever turned up the white o’ th’ eye. Give me my book, Club, put out thy link, and come behind us.
They knock.
ANSWER WITHIN
Who’s there?
DRYFAT
Two Brothers and a Sister in the Family.
They are let in. Purge knocks.
WITHIN
Who’s there?
PURGE
A Familiar Brother.
[WITHIN]
Here’s no room for you nor your familiarity.
PURGE
How? No room for me nor my familiarity? Why, what’s the difference between a Familiar Brother and a Brother in the Family? O, I know: I made ellipsis of “in” in this place where it should have been expressed, so that the want of “in” put me clean out; or, let me see: may it not be some mystery drawn from arithmetic? For my life, these Familists love no subtraction, take nothing away, but put in and add as much as you will; and after addition follows multiplication of a most Pharasithypocritical crew. Well, for my part I like not this Family, nor indeed some kind of private lecturing that women use. Look to’t, you that have such gadders to your wives: self-willed they are as children, and, i’faith, capable of not much more than they, peevish by custom, naturally fools. I remember a pretty wooden sentence in a preamble to an exercise, where the reader prayed that men of his coat might grow up like cedars to make good wainscot in the House of Sincerity; would not this wainscot phrase be writ in brass, to publish him that spake it for an animal? Why, such wooden pellets out of earthen trunks do strike these females into admiration, hits ‘em home; sometimes, perhaps, in at one ear and out at t’other; and then they depart, in opinion wiser than their neighbours, fraught with matter able to take down and mortify their husbands. Well, I’ll home now, and bring the true word next time. I shall expect my wife anon, red-hot with zeal and big with melting tears; and this night do I expect, as her manner is, she will weep me a whole chamber-pot full. Loquor lapides? Do I cast pills abroad? ’Tis no matter what I say; I talk like a pothecary, as I am; I have only purged myself of a little choler and passion, and am now armed with a patient resolution. But how? To put my horns in my pocket? No:
What wise men bear is not for me to scorn;
’Tis a[n] honourable thing to wear the horn.
Exit.