Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 15.djvu/48

40 journey again. We don't yet know who will be president in lord Rochester's room. I measured and found that the penknife would have killed Mr. Harley, if it had gone but half the breadth of my thumb nail lower; so near was he to death. I was so curious to ask him what were his thoughts, while they were carrying him home in the chair. He said, he concluded himself a dead man. He will not allow that Guiscard gave him the second stab, though my lord keeper, who is blind, and I that was not there, are positive in it. He wears a plaster still as broad as half a crown. Smoke how wide the lines are, but faith I don't do it on purpose: but I have changed my side in this new Chelsea bed, and I don't know how, methinks, but it is so unfit, and so awkward, never saw the like.

6. You must remember to enclose your letters in a fair paper, and direct the outside thus; To Erasmus Lewis, esq., at my lord Dartmouth's office at Whitehall; I said so before, but it may miscarry you know, yet I think none of my letters did ever miscarry, faith I think never one; among all the privateers and the storms: O faith, my letters are too good to be lost. MD's letters may tarry, but never miscarry, as the old woman used to say. And indeed, how should they miscarry, when they never come before their time? It was a terrible rainy day; yet I made a shift to steal fair weather over head, enough to go and come in. I was early with the secretary, and dined with him afterward. In the morning I began to chide him, and tell him my fears of his proceedings. But Arthur Moore came up and relieved him. But I forgot, for you never heard of Arthur Moore. But when