Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/233

Rh and cloth, the philosopher's stone, and the universal medicine : that he was so far from showing his customary reverence to the will, that he kept company with those, that called his father a cheating rogue, and his will a forgery : that he not only sat quietly and heard his father railed at, but often chimed in with the discourse, and hugged the authors as his bosom friends : That, instead of asking for blows at the corners of the streets, he now bestowed them as plentifully as he begged them before. In short, that he was grown a mere rake; and had nothing left in him of old Jack, except his spite to John Bull's mother.

Another witness made oath, That Jack had been overheard bragging of a trick he had found out to manage the old formal jade, as he used to call her. "Damn this numbskull of mine," quoth he, "that I could not light on it sooner. As long as I go in this ragged tattered coat, I am so well known, that I am hunted away from the old woman's door by every barking cur about the house; they bid me defiance. There's no doing mischief as an open enemy; I must find some way or other of getting within doors, and then I shall have better opportunities of playing my pranks, beside the benefit of good keeping."

Two witnesses swore, that several years ago, there Rh