Selected quad for the lemma: day_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
day_n	hour_n	long_a	minute_n	15,987	5	12.6107	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35532	Selēnarhia, or, The government of the world in the moon a comical history / written by that famous wit and caveleer of France, Monsieur Cyrano Bergerac ; and done into English by Tho. St Serf, Gent.; Histoire comique des états et empires de la lune. English	Cyrano de Bergerac, 1619-1655.; St. Serfe, Thomas, Sir, fl. 1668.	1659 (1659)	Wing C7719; ESTC R18714	59,111	189

This present occupied me about an hour and in fine having hung them like a pair of pendants I went a walking but I was hardly at the end of the street when I met a multitude of people very melancholy Neither is this our finest way of burial for when one of our Philosopher arrives to an age wherein he finds his Wit decay and the Ice of his years to chill the motions of his Soul he assembles his friends at a sumptuous Banquet then having expounded the motives which make him resolve to take leave of Nature and the small hopes the hath of adding any thing to his great Works they either are gracious to him that is to say they permit him to die or they severely command him to live But when by plurality of voices they have left his life at his own disposing he advertiseth his dearest friends of the time and place These purge and abstain from eating four and twenty hours then being come to the house of the Wise-man and having sacrificed to the Sun they enter the Chamber of the Generoso who waits their coming upon a bed of State each one embraceth him and when it comes to his turn whom he most affects after having tenderly embraced leaning upon him he joyns his mouth to his and with his right hand sheaths the prepared dagger in his breast his friend parts not his lips from his till he find him expired then drawing the steel from his bosome and closing with his mouth the wound he swallows his blood till a second succeed him then a third then a fourth and so all the company and four or five hours after they bring each of them a wench of sixteen or seventeen years old and during three or four dayes whilst they are tasting the pleasured of love they feed upon nothing but the flesh of the deceased which they eat raw to the end that if of an hundred imbracements any thing be born they may be assured that their friend is revived I interrupted this Discourse saying to him that made it that this manner of doing had some resemblance with the fashion of our Climate so I continued my walk so long that when I came back dinner had been ready two hours they askt me why I came so late It is not my fault said I to the Cook that complained for I enquired many times in the streets what a Clock it was but they made me no answer only opened their mouths shut their teeth and held their faces awry Why cry'd out all the company Do you not know that by that they shew'd you what a Clock it was 'Faith said I they might have held their long Noses in the Sun long enough before I understood them It is a commodity answered they which serves them in stead of a Watch for of their Teeth they make so true a Dial that when they will instruct any one in the hour of the day they open their Lips and the shadow of their Noses like a Gnomon denotes the questioned minute Now that you may know why in this Countrey they have all great Noses assoon as the woman is brought to bed the Matrones carry immediately the Childe to the Master of the Seminary and just at the end of the yeer those of experience being assembled if their noses prove shorter then a certain measure in the Syndick he is judged Camas and put into the hands of some who geld them You will ask me the cause of this barbarousness and how it coms to pass that we who esteem Virginity a crime should ordain forced continence But know that we did it after having observed for thirty ages that a great Nose denotes a wise man courteous affable generous liberal and that a little one is a sign of the contrary wherefore of flat noses we make Eunuchs because the Republick had rather have no children then children like them he was yet a speaking when I saw a man enter stark naked I presently sat down and covered my self to salute him for those are the marks of the greatest respects you can testifie in that Countrey This Kingdom says he desires before you return into your world to advertise the Magistrates because that a Mathematician comes now from promising the Councel that if when you are returned home you will make a certain Machine that he 'll teach you he will attract your Globe and joyn it to this which I promised to perform I beseech you said I to my Landlord when the other was gone to tell me why this Messenger wore about him the Privy-Parts in brass which I had often seen when I was caged but never asked what they were for because I was always invironed by the Queens women whom I feared to offend if I had in their presence begun so gross a discourse so that he answered me in this manner The females here no more then the males are ingrateful enough to blush at the sight of that which forged them and Virgins are not ashamed to love the onely thing upon us which is the greatest memorial of nature prickt thereunto by an itching zeal know then that the Scarf wherewith this man is honoured on which hangeth the delightfullest Member of mankinde is the Symbole of a Gentleman and the mark to distinguish the Noble from the ignoble this Paradox seemed so extragavant that I could not forbear to laugh This Custome seems very extraordinary to me for in our World the mark of Gentility is to wear a Sword Why my dear little man said my Host are the great ones of your Countrey mad to make a Parade of an instrument which denotes a Butcher and which is forged but for our Ruine and in fine the sworn Enemy of all living Creatures and on the other side to hide an instrument without which we should be in the rank of what is not the Prometheus of each Animal and the constant repairer of Natures feebleness Unhappy Country where the marks of Generation are ignominious and those of destruction honourable and in the mean mean time you call these members the shameful parts as if there were any thing more glorious then the bestowing of life or more infamous then the depriving thereof During all this Discourse we still continued our dinner which having finisht we went into the garden to take the Air and there taking an occasion to speak of Generation and Conception he said to me You must know that the Earth being converted to a tree that tree to a hog and that hog to a man we must beleeve all beings in Nature tend to the most perfect and that they aspire to become man that Essence being the Period as the best mixture and the best imaginable in this World since it is that which joyns life with Reason all which none but a Pedantick Coxcomb will deny being we see that a Plum-tree by the heat of its germ as by a mouth sucks and digests the sod that invirons it that a hog devours the fruit

to the wounded part your Doctors say it is sent by provident Nature to succour the debilitated parts which should make us conclude that there is besides the Soul and the understanding a third intellectual substance in us who enjoys its functions and Organs apart Wherefore I think it more probable to say that those little Animals finding themselves assaulted presently send to demand succour of their neighbours being arrived from all parts and the countrey being incapable of so much company they either die with hunger or are smothered in the press this mortality happens when the Aposthume is ripe for to testifie that these Creatures are then dead the rotten flesh becomes insensible and if bleeding often ordained for to divert the fluxion doth do any good 't is because having lost much by the orifice which these little Creatures endeavored to stop they refuse to assist their Allies having but enough wherewithal to defend themselves at home Thus he ended and when the other Philosopher saw our eyes fixt upon his to exhort him to speak in his time Men said he seeing you are curious to teach this little Animal our like something of the Science we profess I will now dictate a Treatise which I shall be willing to produce unto him because of the light it gives to the Intelligence of our Physick it is the explication of the Eternal Origine of the World But being much prest in the working of my bellows you will pardon the time since I 'll promise you assoon as ever it is arrived where it ought to be I will largely satisfie you At these words the son of the house called his father to know what a clock it was who having answered that it was past eight he askt him in passion why he had not advertised them at seven as he had commanded him and that he knew that the house removed to morrow and that the walls of the Town were so already son answered he since you were at table there is an express prohibition published of parting till the next day after to morrow no matter answered the young man you ought blindly to obey and not to penetrate into my orders and only to remember what I had commanded you quick go and fetch your picture which when he had brought the young man took it by the arm and whipt it a whole quarter of an hour together Thou good for nothing he continu'd for punishment of your disobedience I will make you serve every one this day for a laughing-stock for which effect you shall go upon two leggs the poor man went forth quite disconsolate and his son excused his transport unto us I had much adoe though I almost bit my lips thorow to forbear laughing at so pleasant a punishment wherefore to break off this mad Pedantism which would surely have made me burst out at last I beseecht him to tell me what he meant by the voyage of the Town of which he had lately spoke and if the houses and walls travelled He answered me Amongst our Towns dear Stranger there be Motional and Fundamental the Motional ones of that we are now in are made as I shall now tell you the Architecture as you see of each Palace upholds it upon light wood we make it upon four wheels in the thickness of one of the walls he puts ten great pair of bellows whose snowts pass by an Horizontal line thorow the last story from one pinacle to the other so that when they would remove the Town to another place for they change the Air each season each one unfolds on one side of his house large sayls just before the pipes of the bellows then having bent a spring to make them play their houses in less then eight dayes by the continual gusts which those windy Monsters vomit are driven a hundred leagues as for those we call stable they are almost like your Towers except that they are of wood and that they are pierced in the Centre by a great and strong Vice which goes from the top to the bottom to mount or dismount them at pleasure Now the earth is hollowed as deep as the house is high and it is all ordered in this manner because that assoon as the frosts begin to harden the Earth they may sink their houses where they are sheltered from the malice of the Air but as soon as the sweet breathing of the Spring begins to soften it again they mount into the light by the means of this great Vice I spoke of I entreated him since he had already had so much goodness for me and that the Town was removed not till after the morrow to tell me something of that Eternal Original of the Worlds of which he had a little before spoke I promise you said I in recompence thereof assoon as I shall be returned into the Moon from whence my Governour pointing to my Spirit will tell you I am come I will sow your glory in recounting the rare things you have told me I see that you laugh at that promise because you doe not beleeve the Moon I speak of to be a World and me an inhabitant thereof but I can assure you that the people of that World who take this for a Moon will laugh at me when I shall tell them that it is a World and that there are fields and Inhabitants He answered me with a smile and thus pursued his Discourse Since we are constrained when we have recourse to the Original of that Great All to fall into three or four absurdities it will be necessary to take the way where we shall be least apt to stumble I then say that the first obstacle that stops us is the Eternity of the Worlds and the Wit of man not being strong enough to conceive it and being no abler to imagine it then that great Universe so fine so well ordered being made by its self they have recourse to Creation But it is like him that leaps into the River for fear of being vver by the Rain they save themselves from the arms of a Dwarf to fall into the mercy of a Gyant nay they doe not save themselves neither for that Eternity which they take from the World because they cannot comprehend it they bestow upon God as if he had need of that present or as if it were easier to imagine it in the one then the other for pray tell me who did ever imagine any thing could be made of nothing Alas between nothing and an Atome there are preparations so infinite that the quickest Brain cannot penetrate into it therefore to scape this inexplicable Labyrinth you must admit an Eternal matter with Gods But you will answer me when I have admitted this Eternal matter How did this Choas range it self in this manner Well I will now explicate it unto you My little Animal you must after having Mentally divided each little visible Body into an infinite many invisible Bodies imagine that the infinite Universe is