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

Rh Lewis came to us. Mansel asked where we dined? We said, together. He said, we should dine with him, only his wife desired him to bring nobody, because she had only a leg of mutton. I said, I would dine with him to choose; but he would send a servant to order a plate or two: yet this man has ten thousand pounds a year in land, and is a lord of the treasury, and is not covetous neither, but runs out merely by slattering and negligence. The worst dinner I ever saw at the dean's was better: but so it is with abundance of people here. I called at night at Mr. Harley's, who begins to walk in his room with a stick, but is mighty weak. See how much I have lost with that ugly grease. 'Tis your fault, pray; and I'll go to bed.

April 1. The duke of Buckingham's house fell down last night with an earthquake, and is half swallowed up; Won't you go and see it? An April fool, an April fool, O ho, young women. Well, don't be angry, I'll make you an April fool no more till the next time: we had no sport here, because it is Sunday, and Easter Sunday. I dined with the secretary, who seemed terribly down and melancholy, which Mr. Prior and Lewis observed as well as I: perhaps something is gone wrong; perhaps there is nothing in it. God bless my own dearest MD, and all is well.

2. We have such windy weather, 'tis troublesome walking, yet all the rabble have got into our park these holidays. I am plagued with one Richardson, an Irish parson, and his project of printing Irish Bibles &c. to make you Christians in that country: I Rh