A Pin passeth for that which is next nothing, or (if you will) is the terminus a quo, from which something doth begin, and proceed from a Pin to a pound, &c. However it is considerable both as hurtfull and usefull; Hurtfull, if advantagiously placed it may prove as mortall, as a Poneyard; the life of the greatest man lying at the mercy of the meanest thing; Usefull, not onely to fasten our ornaments, but fill up the c•…•…ks be∣twixt our cloathes, lest wind and weather should shoot thorough them.
Many and very good of these are made in this County, a Commodity not to be slighted, since the very dust that falls from them is found profitable. We commonly say that it is not beneath a proper person to stoop to take up a Pin, untill he be worth Ten thousand pounds, according to the thrifty rule in Latine: Qui negligit minima nun∣quam ditescet. Such who admire, that so many millions of Pins, made, sold, used, and lost in England, should vanish away invisible, may rather wonder how so many that wear them, (being no more then Pins in the hand of their Maker,) doe decay, die, and slip-down in the dust, in silence and obscurity. I will adde, that the world is well altered with England, as to this Commodity, now exporting so much of them into forraign parts, whereas formerly * 1.1 Strangers have sould Pins in this land to the value of threescore thousand pound a year.