which was a kind of hollow vessel filled with great stones, and fastened by a cable to the child’s waist.  As she sat down close to the table on which I stood, her appearance astonished me not a little.  This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size, and their defects not to be seen but through a magnifying glass, where we find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough, and coarse and ill-colored.

I remember, when I was at Lilliput, the complexions of those diminutive people appeared to me the fairest in the world; and talking upon this subject with a person of learning there, who was an intimate friend of mine, he said that my face appeared much fairer and smoother when he looked on me from the ground than it did upon a nearer view, when I took him up in my hand and brought him close, which he confessed was at first a very shocking sight.  He said he could discover great holes in my skin; that the stumps of my beard were ten times stronger than the bristles of a boar, and my complexion made up of several colors altogether disagreeable:  although I must beg leave to say for myself that I am as fair as most of my sex and country, and very little sunburnt by my travels.  On the other side, discoursing of the ladies of that emperor’s court, he used to tell me one had freckles, another too wide a mouth, a third too large a nose, nothing of which I was able to distinguish.  I confess this reflection was obvious enough; which, however, I could not forbear, lest the reader might think those vast creatures were actually deformed:  for I must do them justice to say they are a comely race of people; and particularly the features of my master’s countenance, although he were but a farmer, when I beheld him from the height of sixty feet, appeared very well proportioned.

When dinner was done my master went out to his labors, and, as I could discover by his voice and gestures, gave his wife a strict charge to take care of me.  I was very much tired and disposed to sleep, which, my mistress perceiving, she put me on her own bed, and covered me with a clean white handkerchief, but larger and coarser than the mainsail of a man-of-war.

I slept about two hours, and dreamed I was at home with my wife and children, which aggravated my sorrows when I awaked and found myself alone in a vast room, between two and three hundred feet wide, and above two hundred high, lying in a bed twenty yards wide.  My mistress was gone about her household affairs, and had locked me in.  The bed was eight yards from the floor.

[Illustration:  “I ...  DREW MY HANGER TO DEFEND MYSELF.”  P. 18.]