Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 6.djvu/338

 the head of all the yahoos in that district, young and old, male and female, come in a body, and discharge their excrements upon him from head to foot. But how far this might be applicable to our courts and favourites, and ministers of state, my master said I could best determine.

I durst make no return to this malicious insinuation, which debased human understanding below the sagacity of a common hound, who has judgment enough to distinguish and follow the cry of the ablest dog in the pack, without being ever mistaken.

My master told me, there were some qualities remarkable in the yahoos, which he had not observed me to mention, or at least very slightly, in the accounts I had given him of human kind; he said, those animals like other brutes, had their females in common; but in this they differed, that the she yahoo would admit the males, while she was pregnant; and that the hes would quarrel and fight with the females, as fiercely as with each other. Both which practices, were such degrees of infamous brutality as no other sensitive creature ever arrived at.

Another thing he wondered at in the yahoos, was their strange disposition to nastiness and dirt; whereas there appears to be a natural love of cleanliness, in all other animals. As to the two former accusations, I was glad to let them pass without any reply, because I had not a word to offer upon them in fence