Beginners guide to public spitting
Francis Hawkins was a child prodigy, an able translator who by the age of 10 had already translated a work of literature. But it was three years later in his translation of Youths Behaviour, or, Decency in Conversation amongst Men from the French original that he presented us with this invaluable piece of advice that would get us through centuries. The book published somewhere in the second half of the 15th century re-produces before us what the French had written for “the use and benefit of their youth.” And what’s more beneficial in this ever-expanding-and-thus-contracting world to know how to spit in public domain with the utmost chivalry of a cow pooping in the middle of the road yet disrupting the affairs of none.
So for you this guide to public spitting:
“Spet not farre off thee, nor behinde thee, but aside, a little distant, & not right before thy companion: but if it be some grosse flegme, one ought, if it may be, tred upon it. Be-spet not the windows in the streets, nor spet on the fire, nor on a bason, nor on any other place where the spettle cannot be taken away by putting thy foot thereon.”