Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 15.djvu/137

Rh be thanked that the ugly numbing is gone. Pray use exercise when you go to town. What game is that ombra which Dr. Elwood and you play at? is it the Spanish game ombre? Your card purse! you a card purse? you a fiddlestick. You have luck indeed; and luck in a bag. What a devil is that eight shilling tea-kettle? copper, or tin japanned? It is like your Irish politeness, raffling for tea-kettles. What a splutter you keep to convince me that Walls has no taste? My head continues pretty well. Why do you write, dear sirrah Stella, when you find your eyes so weak that you cannot see? what comfort is there in reading what you write, when one knows that? So Dingley can't write because of the clutter of new company come to Wexford? I suppose the noise of their hundred horses disturbs you; or, do you lie in one gallery, as in an hospital? what; you are afraid of losing in Dublin the acquaintance you have got in Wexford; and chiefly the bishop of Raphoe, an old, doating, perverse coxcomb? Twenty at a time at breakfast. That is like five pounds at a time, when it was never but once. I doubt, madam Dingley, you are apt to lie in your travels, though not so bad as Stella; she tells thumpers, as I shall prove in my next, if I find this receives encouragement. So Dr. Elwood says. There are a world of pretty things in my works. A pox on his praises! an enemy here would say more. The duke of Buckingham would say as much, though he and I are terribly fallen out; and the great men are perpetually inflaming me . XV.