Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/358

352  upon Stocks market, and shake hands like brethren.

Shake therefore your heads, O ye people! My time is short, and yours is not long; lengthen, therefore, your repentance, and shorten your iniquities.

Lo! the comet appeareth in the south! yea, it appeareth exceedingly. Ah poor deluded Christians! Ah blind brethren! think not that this baleful dog-star only shaketh his tail at you in waggery; no, it shaketh it as a rod. It is not a sporting tail, but a fiery tail, even as the tail of a harlot; yea such a tail as may reach, and be told, to all posterity.

I am the porter, that was barbarously slain in Fleet street: by the M and H, was I slain, when they laid violent hands upon me.

They put their hook into my mouth, they divided my nostrils asunder, they sent me, as they thought, to my long home; but now I am returned again to foretel their destruction.

The time is at hand, when the freethinkers of Great Britain shall be converted to Judaism; and the sultan shall receive the foreskins of Toland and Collins in a box of gold.

Yet two days, a day, and half a day, yet, upon the twelfth hour of the fourth day, those emblems of G and M at the Guildhall shall fall to the ground, and be broke asunder. With them shall perish the M and H, and the whole world shall perish with them.

[Here the spirit: disappeared, and immediately thereupon held his peace.]