SWIFT. 'Tis my Country keeps me walking! why who can lie still? I don't believe there are many Ghosts now, that have any share of Understanding, or any regard for _Ireland_, that are to be found in their Graves at Midnight. For my part I can no more keep in my Den than if it were the Day of Judgment. I have been earth'd now eight Years last _October_, and I think on my Conscience (and you know _Tom_ the Conscience of one dead Man is worth ten of those that are living) I have had very few good Days Sleep since I got there. Ah _Tom_! poor _Ireland_! poor _Ireland_! it plagued my Heart while I was trifling away Life there; but my Curse on it, I never thought it would have broke my Rest thus when I was dead. I have tumbled and toss'd from one Side to the other (and by the by, they make these cursed Coffins so narrow 'tis a Plague to be in them) first one Thing would come into my Head, and then another, and often wrought me so, that I have many a time been forced to walk a whole Moon to rest me and get the better Nap when I lay down. Prithee how have you done? PRIOR. Why, very little better; only as I have not been so long shut up in my Dormitory as you, the Confinement is less irksome. But I was not affected the same way with you, for I sometimes slept for Months together like a Dormouse; but when _Ireland_ once gets into my Head and its present melancholy Circumstances, it works my Thoughts upwards and downwards from the Great Ones to their Slaves, like a poor Patient with _Ward_'s Drop and Pill. SWIFT. That has often been my Case _Tom_. When I get into that Train of thinking, and consider the present Situation of our Country, it makes me as uneasy in my Coffin as a Rat shut up in a Trap. I remember an old She[1] Fool, that was fonder of scribling than reigning, used to say, that the Dead have that melancholy Advantage over the Living of first forgetting them; but 'tis as false as ten thousand other Truths, that your Philosophers and Politicians above Ground keep such a babling with over our Heads. For my part I never had that Pleasure, for since my first Nap under my Gravestone, which did not last three Weeks, I have been as much perplex'd about _Ireland_, as if I was still living at the Deanry, writing for Posterity, and thinking for my poor Country. What makes you sigh so _Tom_? Why you draw your Breath as hard as a broken-winded Racer; some Qualm I suppose about this neglected Island. [1] Queen _Christina_ of _Sweden_.