Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/92

86 seem surprising to people, who search into the bottom of things. Madame Bourignon, a devout French lady, has shown us, how man was at first created male and female in one individual, having the faculty of propagation within himself; a circumstance necessary to the state of innocence, wherein a man's happiness was not to depend upon the caprice of another. It was not till after he had made a faux pas, that he had his female mate. Many such transformations of individuals have been well attested; particularly one by Montaigne, and another by the late bishop of Salisbury. From all which it appears, that this system of male and female has already undergone, and may hereafcer suffer, several alterations. Every smatterer in anatomy knows, that a woman is but an introverted man; a new fusion and flatus will turn the hollow bottom of a bottle into a convexity; but I forbear for the sake of my modest men-readers, who are in a few days to be virgins.

In some subjects the smallest alterations will do: some men are sufficiently spread about the hips, and contrived with that female softness, that they want only the negative quantity to make them buxom wenches; and there are women who are, as it were, already the èbauche of a good sturdy man. If nature could be puzzled, it will be how to bestow the redundant matter of the exuberant bubbies that now appear about town, or how to roll out the short dapper fellows into well-sized women.

This great conjunction will begin to operate on Saturday the 29th instant. Accordingly about eight at