Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 6.djvu/337

Rh they meet with, but by the nastiness, and greediness of that sordid brute. Neither has their language any more than a general appellation for those maladies, which is borrowed from the name of the beast, and called hnea-yahoo, or yahoo's evil; and the cure prescribed is a mixture of their own dung and urine, forcibly put down the yahoo's throat. This I have since often known to have been taken with success, and do here freely recommend it to my countrymen, for the publick good, as an admirable specifick against all diseases produced by repletion.

As to learning, government, arts, manufactures, and the like, my master confessed, he could find little or no resemblance between the yahoos of that country, and those in ours. For he only meant to observe, what parity there was in our natures. He had heard indeed, some curious Houyhnhnms observe, that in most herds there was a sort of ruling yahoo (as among us there is generally some leading or principal stag in a park) who was always more deformed in body, and mischievous in disposition, than any of the rest. That this leader had usually a favourite as like himself as he could get, whose employment was to lick his master's feet and posteriors, and drive the female yahoos to his kennel ; for which he was now and then rewarded with a piece of ass's flesh. This favourite is hated by the whole herd, and therefore, to protect himself, keeps always near the person of his leader. He usually continues in office, till a worse can be found; but the very moment he is discarded, his successor, at Rh

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