head, or of your foot, is a sufficient measure. Send it by the first opportunity. Do not forget our good friends the 500 weavers. You may omit the gold thread. Many disputes have arisen here, whether the big-endians, and lesser-endians, ever differed in opinion about the breaking of eggs, when they were to be either buttered or poached? or whether this part of cookery was ever known in Lilliput?
I cannot conclude without telling you, that our island is in great joy; one of our yahoos having been delivered of a creature, half ram and half yahoo; and another has brought forth four perfect black rabbits[1]. May we not hope, and with some probability expect, that in time, our female yahoos will produce a race of Houyhnhnms? I am, sir, your most humble servant,
FROM MR. GAY.
ABOUT ten days ago a book was published here of the travels of one Gulliver, which has been the
- ↑ This alludes to a famous impostor, Mary Toft, of Godalmin, in Surry, called the rabbit woman, who, in Nov. 1726, pretended to be delivered of living rabbits, and imposed, among others, upon St. André, a surgeon who was her advocate in print.
- ↑ Sieve Yahoo is a name given by Swift, in his Gulliver's Travels, to a court lady.
