Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/168

116 by a fugitive faculty, peculiar to the ears of that animal, receive immediate benefit, either by eructation, or expiration, or evomitation.

Another very beneficial project of lord Peter's was, an office of insurance for tobacco-pipes, martyrs of the modern zeal, volumes of poetry, shadows, and rivers: that these, nor any of these, shall receive damage by fire. Whence, our friendly societies, may plainly find themselves to be only transcribers from this original; though the one, and the other, have been of great benefit to the undertakers, as well as of equal to the publick.

Lord PETER was also held the original author of puppets and raree-shows ; the great usefulness whereof being so generally known, I shall not enlarge farther upon this particular.

But another discovery, for which he was much renowned, was his famous universal pickle. For having remarked how your common pickle, in use among housewives, was of no farther benefit than to preserve dead flesh, and certain kinds of vegetables; Peter, with great cost as well as art, had contrived a pickle proper for houses, gardens, towns, men, women, children, and cattle; wherein he could preserve them as sound as insects in amber. Now this pickle to the taste, the smell, and the Rh