Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/486

450 pain, to find words; but at last, after many efforts, not being able, he fetched a deep sigh, and was afterward silent. A few months after this, upon his housekeeper's removing a knife, as he was going to catch at it, he shrugged up his shoulders, and said, "I am what I am;" and, in about six minutes, repeated the same words two or three times.

In the year 1744, he now and then called his servant by his name, and once attempting to speak to him, but not being able to express his meaning, he showed signs of much uneasiness, and at last said, "I am a fool." Once afterward, as his servant was taking away his watch, he said, "bring it here;" and when the same servant was breaking a hard large coal, he said, "that is a stone, you blockhead."

From this time he was perfectly silent till the latter end of October, 1745, and then died without the least pang or convulsion, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.