Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/14

2 as easy under it as I shall be; for I find you so solicitous about me, that you cannot bear my disappointments as well as I can. If I do not write intelligibly to you, it is because I would not have the clerks of the postoffice know every thing I am doing. If you would come here this summer, you might, with me, have helped to have drunk up the duke's wine, and saved your money. I am growing so saving of late, that I very often reproach myself with being covetous; and I am very often afraid that I shall have the trouble of having money, and never have the pleasure of making use of it. I wish you could live among us; but not unless it could be to your ease and satisfaction. You insist upon your being minister of Amesbury, Dawley, Twickenham, Riskings, and prebendary of Westminster. For your being minister in those places, I cannot promise you; but I know you might have a good living in every one of them. Gambadoes I have rid in, and I think them a very fine and useful invention; but I have not made use of them since I left Devonshire. I ride and walk every day to such excess, that I am afraid I shall take a surfeit of it. I am sure, if I am not better in health after it, it is not worth the pains. I say this, though I have this season shot nineteen brace of partridges. I have very little acquaintance with our vicar; he does not live among us, but resides in another parish. And I have not played at backgammon with any body since I came to Amesbury, but lady Harold, and lady Bateman. As Dr. Delany has taken away a fortune