Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/93

Rh at night, as Senezino shall begin at the opera, Si videte, he shall be observed to make an unusual motion; upon which the audience will be affected with a red suffusion over their countenance: and because a strong succussion of the muscles of the belly is necessary toward performing this great operation, both sexes will be thrown into a profuse involuntary laughter. Then, to use the modest terms of Anaximander, "shall negative quantity be turned into positive, &c." Time never beheld, nor will it ever assemble, such a number of untouched virgins within those walls! but alas! such will be the impatience and curiosity of people to act in their new capacity, that many of them will be completed men and women that very night. To prevent the disorders that may happen upon this occasion, is the chief design of this paper.

Gentlemen have begun already to make use of this conjunction to compass their filthy purposes. They tell the ladies, forsooth, that it is only parting with a perishable commodity, hardly of so much value as a callico under-petticoat; since, like its mistress, it will be useless in the form it is now in. If the ladies have no regard to the dishonour and immorality of the action, I desire they will consider, that nature, who never destroys her own productions, will exempt bigbellied women till the time of their lying in; so that not to be transformed, will be the same as to be pregnant. If they do not think it worth while to defend a fortress, that is to be demolished in a few days, let them reflect, that it will be a melancholy thing nine months hence to be brought to bed of a bastard; a posthumous bastard, as it were, to which the quondam father can be no more than a dry nurse. Rh