The schoolemaster, or teacher of table philosophie A most pleasant and merie companion, wel worthy to be welcomed (for a dayly gheast) not onely to all mens boorde, to guyde them with moderate [and] holsome dyet: but also into euery mans companie at all tymes, to recreate their mindes, with honest mirth and delectable deuises: to sundrie pleasant purposes of pleasure and pastyme. Gathered out of diuers, the best approued auctours: and deuided into foure pithy and pleasant treatises, as it may appeare by the contentes.

Chap. 20. Merye iestes of Boyes.

BOetius in his booke of the discipline of schollars,* 1.1 wryteth a storie of a boy whom his parents corrected not in his youth, for his naughtie demeanour. But increasing euery day more & more in wickednesse, at last cōmitted such great robberies, that he was led to the gallowes to be hanged, & desyring to kysse his father ere he dyed, came vnto him and byt of his nose, saying, that if he had corrected him for smal faults whē he was a chyld,* 1.2 he had not then come vnto that shame. A certayne lytle boy séeing his father beating his mother euery daye, & hearing him saye one night when he was a bed, that he had forgotten to doe one thing: I know what that is quod the chyld, what sayd the father? Mary sayd he to beate my mother. A man had two sonnes, wherof one alwaies craued a piece of whatsoeuer was at the boord, whom the father rebuked,* 1.3 & set them both togither on a stoole. And when the young boy saw meat on the table that he lyked & durst not aske it, he hemmed, and the father threw a piece of meate at y^e other. Then sayd the lytle one, what a paine is this that I must hem, and another must haue the meate?

Notes

• * 1.1

  of the boye that byt his fathers nose, vvhen he vvas going to the gallovves.
• * 1.2

  of the boye that told his father that hee had for∣got to beate his mother.
• * 1.3

  of the boye that hēmed to his father for meate.