Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/224

216 For these, people have fallen into a needless and endless way of multiplying ceremonies, which have been extremely troublesome to those who practise them, and insupportable to everybody else: insomuch that wise men are often more uneasy at the over-civility of these refiners, than they could possibly be, in the conversation of peasants or mechanicks.

The impertinencies of this ceremonial behaviour are no where better seen than at those tables where the ladies preside, who value themselves upon account of their good breeding; where a man must reckon upon passing an hour without doing any one thing he has a mind to; unless he will be so hardy as to break through all the settled decorum of the family. She determines what he loves best, and how much he shall eat; and if the master of the house happens to be of the same disposition, he proceeds, in the same tyrannical manner, to prescribe in the drinking part: at the same time you are under the necessity of answering a a thousand apologies for your entertainment. And although a good deal of this humour is pretty well worn off among many people of the best fashion, yet too much of it still remains, especially in the country; where an honest gentleman assured me, that having been kept four days against his will at a friend's house, with all the circumstances of hiding his boots, locking up the stable, and other contrivances of the like nature, he could not remember, from the moment he came into the house to the moment he left it, any one thing, wherein his inclination was not directly contradicted; as if the whole family had entered into a combination to torment him.

But, beside: all this, it would be endless to recount the many foolish and ridiculous accidents I have served