Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/269

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JOURNAL TO STELLA.
261

paper? (I forgot to say this in my former.) Cannot you get thicker? Why, that is a common caution that writingmasters give their scholars; you must have heard it a hundred times. It is this,

If paper be thin,
Ink will slip in;
But if it be thick,
You may write with a stick.

I had a letter to day from poor Mrs. Long, giving me an account of her present life, obscure in a remote country town[1], and how easy she is under it. Poor creature! it is just such an alteration in life, as if Presto should be banished from MD, and condemned to converse with Mrs. Raymond. I dined to day with Ford, sir Richard Levinge, &c. at a place where they board, hard by. I was lazy, and not very well, sitting so long with company yesterday. I have been very busy writing this evening at home, and had a fire: I am spending my second half bushel of coals; and now am in bed, and it is late.

13. I dined to day in the city, and then went to christen Will Frankland's child; and lady Falconbridge was one of the godmothers: this is a daughter of Oliver Cromwell, and extremely like him by his pictures that I have seen. I staid till almost eleven, and am now come home and gone to bed. My business in the city was to thank Stratford for a kindness he has done me, which now I will tell you. I found bank stock was fallen thirty-four in the hundred, and was mighty desirous to buy it;

  1. She was then at Lynn in Norfolk.
S 3
but