Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/369

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JOURNAL TO STELLA.
361

of walking. I should be plaguy busy at Laracor if I were there now, cuttting down willows, planting others, scouring my canal, and every kind of thing. If Raymond goes (illegible text) this summer, you must submit, and make them a visit, that we may have another eel and trout fishing; and that Stella may ride by and see Presto in his morning-gown in the garden, and so go up with Joe to the Hill of Bree, and round by Scurlock's Town; O Lord, how I remember names; faith it gives me short sighs: therefore no more of that if you love me. Good morrow, I will go rise like a gentleman, my pills say I must. At night. Lady Kerry sent to desire me to engage some lords about an affair she has in their house here: I called to see her, but found she had already engaged every lord I knew, and that there was no great difficulty in the matter, and it rained like a dog; so I took coach, for want of better exercise, and dined privately with a hangdog in the city, and walked back in the evening. The days are now long enough to walk in the Park after dinner; and so I do whenever it is fair. This walking is a strange remedy; Mr. Prior walks to make himself fat, and I to bring myself down; he has generally a cough, which he only calls a cold: we often walk round the Park together. So I will go sleep.

22. It snowed all this morning prodigiously, and was some inches thick in three or four hours. I dined with Mr. Lewis of the secretary's office at his lodgings: the chairmen that carried me squeezed a great fellow against a wall, who wisely turned his back, and broke one of the side glasses in a thousand pieces. I fell a scolding, pretended I was

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