a better opportunity.
Having thus answered the only objection that can ever be raised
against me as a traveller, I here take a final leave of all my
courteous readers, and return to enjoy my own speculations in my
little garden at Redriff; to apply those excellent lessons of virtue
which I learned among the HOUYHNHNMS; to instruct the
YAHOOS of my own family, is far as I shall find them docible
animals; to behold my figure often in a glass, and thus, if possible,
habituate myself by time to tolerate the sight of a human creature;
to lament the brutality to HOUYHNHNMS in my own country,
but always treat their persons with respect, for the sake of my
noble master, his family, his friends, and the whole
HOUYHNHNM race, whom these of ours have the honour to
resemble in all their lineaments, however their intellectuals came
to degenerate.
I began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the
farthest end of a long table; and to answer (but with the utmost
brevity) the few questions I asked her. Yet, the smell of a YAHOO
continuing very offensive, I always keep my nose well stopped
with rue, lavender, or tobacco leaves. And, although it be hard for
a man late in life to remove old habits, I am not altogether out of.
hopes, in some time, to suffer a neighbour YAHOO in my
company, without the apprehensions I am yet under of his teeth or
his claws.
My reconcilement to the YAHOO kind in general might not be so
difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies only
which nature has entitled them to. I am not in the least provoked at
the sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a
gamester, a politician, a whoremonger, a physician, an evidence, a
suborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like; this is all according to
the due course of things: but when I behold a lump of deformity
and diseases, both in body and mind, smitten with pride, it
immediately breaks all the measures of my patience; neither shall
I be ever able to comprehend how such an animal, and such a
vice, could tally together. The wise and virtuous
HOUYHNHNMS, who abound in all excellences that can adorn a
rational creature, have no name for this vice in their language,
which has no terms to express any thing that is evil, except those
whereby they describe the detestable qualities of their YAHOOS,
among which they were not able to distinguish this of pride, for
want of thoroughly understanding human nature, as it shows itself
in other countries where that animal presides. But I, who had
more experience, could plainly observe some rudiments of it
among the wild YAHOOS.
But the HOUYHNHNMS, who live under the government of
reason, are no more proud of the good qualities they possess, than
I should be for not wanting a leg or an arm; which no man in his
wits would boast of, although he must be miserable without them..
I dwell the longer upon this subject from the desire I have to make
the society of an English YAHOO by any means not
insupportable; and therefore I here entreat those who have any
tincture of this absurd vice, that they will not presume to come in
my sight.

        FOOTNOTES:

(1) A stang is a pole or perch; sixteen feet and a half.

(2) An act of parliament has been since passed by which some
breaches of trust have been made capital.

(3) Britannia. -SIR W. SCOTT.

(4) London. -SIR W. SCOTT.

(5) This is the revised text adopted by Dr. Hawksworth (1766).
The above paragraph in the original editions (1726) takes another
form, commencing:-"I told him that should I happen to live in a
kingdom where lots were in vogue," &c. The names Tribnia and
Langdon an not mentioned, and the "close stool" and its
signification do not occur.

(6) This paragraph is not in the original editions..

(7) The original editions and Hawksworth's have Rotherhith here,
though earlier in the work, Redriff is said to have been Gulliver's
home in England.