Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/419

Rh blockhead don't you see the great improvements I have been making here? Improvements, Mr. dean; why I see a long bog hole out of which I suppose you have cut the turf; you have removed some of the young trees I think to a worse situation; as to taking the stones from the surface of the ground, I allow that is a useful work, as the grass will grow the better for it; and placing them about the field in that form, will make it more easy to carry them off. Plague on your Irish taste, says Swift; this is just what I ought to have expected from you; but neither you nor your forefathers ever made such an improvement; nor will you be able while you live to do any thinkthing [sic] like it.

The doctor was resolved to retaliate on the dean the first opportunity. It happened when he was down there in one of his vacations, that the dean was absent for a few days on a visit elsewhere. He took this opportunity of employing a great number of hands to make an island in the middle of the lake, where the water was twenty feet deep; an arduous work in appearance, but not hard to be executed in a place abounding with large stones upon the surface of the ground, and where long heath grew every where in great plenty; for by placing quantities of those stones in large bundles of heath, the space was soon filled up, and a large island formed. To cover this a sufficient quantity of earth and green sods were brought, and several well grown osiers, and other aquatics, were removed to it. The doctor's secret was better kept than Swift's; who, on his return, walked toward the lake, and seeing the new island, cried out in astonishment, "Heigh! how the water of the lake is sunk in this short time to . I.