Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 11.djvu/231

Rh. We are assured that you keep a constant table, and that your guests leave you with full stomachs and full pockets; that Dr. Arbuthnot sometimes leaves his beloved green cloth, to come and receive your chidings, and pick up your money. We intend shortly to represent your case to my lord treasurer, as what deserves commiseration: but we hope the matter is already settled between his lordship and you, and that you are instructed to be thus magnificent, in order to carry on the cause. We reckon his lordship's life is now secure, since a combination of bandboxes and inkhorns, the engines of late times, were employed in vain to destroy him. He will do me the justice to tell you, that I never fail of toasting you under the name of the governess of Dunkirk, and that you have the honour to be very particularly in my good graces. My lady Masham still continues in a doubtful state of neither up nor down; and one of her servants told mine, "that they did not expect she would cry out this fortnight." I saw yesterday our brother Hill, who promises to be more thrifty of his health, and seems to have a pretty good stock of it. I hope you receive no visits from the headach and the spleen: and one who knows your constitution very well, advises you, by all means, against sitting in the dusk at your window, or on the ground, leaning on your band, or at seesaw in your chair.

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