Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/167

Rh It sometimes happens, that a looking-glass is broken by the same means; while you are looking another way, as you sweep the chamber, the long end of the brush strikes against the glass, and breaks it to shivers. This is the extremest of all misfortunes, and all remedy desperate in appearance, because it is impossible to be concealed. Such a fatal accident once happened in a great family, where I had the honour to be a footman; and I will relate the particulars to show the ingenuity of the poor chambermaid on so sudden and dreadful an emergency, which perhaps may help to sharpen your invention, if your evil star should ever give you the like occasion: the poor girl had broken a large japan glass of great value with a stroke of her brush: she had not considered long, when by a prodigious presence of mind she locked the door, stole into the yard, brought a stone of three pound weight into the chamber, laid it on the hearth just under the looking-glass, then broke a pane in the sash window that looked into the same yard, so shut the door and went about her other affairs. Two hours after the lady goes into the chamber, sees the glass broken, the stone lying under, and a whole pane in the window destroyed; from all which circumstances she concluded, just as the maid could have wished, that some idle straggler in the neighbourhood, or perhaps one of the out servants, had through malice, accident, or carelessness, flung in the stone and done the mischief. Thus far all things went well, and the girl concluded herself out of danger: but it was her ill fortune, that a few hours after in came the parson of the parish, and the lady naturally told him the accident, which you may believe had much posed