The Junior Classics, Volume 5: Stories that never grow old
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 5: Stories that never grow old
Children's literature
I fell into a highroad, for so I took it to be, though it served
to the inhabitants only as a footpath through a field of barley.
Here I walked on for some time, but could see little on either
side, it being now near harvest, and the corn rising at least
forty feet. I was an hour walking to the end of this field, which
was fenced in with a hedge of at least one hundred and twenty feet
high, and the trees so lofty that I could make no computation of
their altitude. There was a stile to pass from this field into the
next. It had four steps, and a stone to cross over when you come
to the uppermost. It was impossible for me to climb this stile,
because every step was six feet high, and the upper stone about
twenty. I was endeavoring to find some gap in the hedge, when I
discovered one of the inhabitants in the next field, advancing
toward the stile, of the same size with him whom I saw in the sea
pursuing our boat. He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire
steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as I
could guess. I was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment,
and ran to hide myself in the corn, whence I saw him at the top of
the stile looking back into the next field, on the right hand, and
heard him call in a voice many degrees louder than a speaking-
trumpet; but the noise was so high in the air, that at first I
certainly thought it was thunder. Whereupon seven monsters, like
himself, came toward him, with reaping-hooks in their hands, each
hook about the largeness of six scythes. These people were not so
well clad as the first, whose servants or laborers they seemed to
be; for, upon some words he spoke, they went to reap the corn in
the field where I lay. I kept from them at as great a distance as
I could, but was forced to move with extreme difficulty, for the
stalks of corn were sometimes not above a foot distant, so that I
could hardly squeeze my body between them. However, I made a shift
to go forward, till I came to a part of the field where the corn
had been laid by the rain and wind. Here it was impossible for me
to advance a step; for the stalks were so interwoven, that I could
not creep through, and the beards of the fallen ears so strong and
pointed, that they pierced through my clothes into my flesh. At
the same time I heard the reapers not above a hundred yards behind
me. Being quite dispirited with toil, and wholly overcome by grief
and despair, I lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished I
might there end my days. I bemoaned my desolate widow and
fatherless children. I lamented my own folly and wilfulness, in
attempting a second voyage, against the advice of all my friends
and relations. In this terrible agitation of mind, I could not
forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as
the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where I was
able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and perform those other
actions, which will be recorded forever in the chronicles of that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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