Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 6.djvu/230

206 curiosity, and easy belief; which, indeed, was not without truth; for I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger days.

HIS academy is not an entire single building, but a continuation of several houses on both sides of a street, which, growing waste, was purchased and applied to that use.

I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the academy. Every room has in it one or more projectors; and I believe I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air, in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock was low, and intreated me to give him something as an encouragement