Unit 5: Vocabulary from Readings 3

The Blefuscudians, who had not the least imagination of what I intended, were at first confounded with astonishment.

But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wringed and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.

He was amazed how so impotent and groveling an insect as I (these were his expressions) could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines; whereof he said some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver.

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

They can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly parts; although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier, during which time they can however be looked upon only as probationers...

But with due deference to so excellent a friend and so deserving a patriot, I cannot be altogether in his sentiments...

Then as to the females, it would, I think with humble submission, be a loss to the public, because they soon would become breeders themselves; and besides, it is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice (although indeed very unjustly) as a little bordering upon cruelty; which I confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection against any project, how well soever intended.

We should see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the market.

Snuff, or the Fan, supply each Pause of Chat,
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.

Meanwhile declining from the Noon of Day,
The Sun obliquely shoots his burning Ray

As many more Manillio forc'd to yield,
And march'd a Victor from the verdant Field.

Sad Chance of War! now, destitute of Aid,
Falls undistinguish'd by the Victor Spade.

Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, in wild Disorder seen,
With Throngs promiscuous strow the level Green.

He springs to Vengeance with an eager pace,
And falls like Thunder on the prostrate Ace.

The Nymph exulting fills with Shouts the Sky

Coffee, (which makes the Politician wise,
And see thro' all things with his half-shut Eyes)
Sent up in Vapours to the Baron's Brain
New Stratagems, the radiant Lock to gain.

The Gnomes direct, to ev'ry Atome just,
The pungent Grains of titillating Dust.