Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/224

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
216
DR. SWIFT'S

their reformation too: and I told him he was the only whig in England I loved, or had any good opinion of.

3. This morning Stella's sister came to me with a letter from her mother, who is at Sheen; but will soon be in town, and will call to see me: she gave me a bottle of palsy water, a small one, and desired I would send it you by the first convenience, as I will; and she promises a quart bottle of the same: your sister looked very well, and seems a good modest sort of girl. I went then to Mr. Lewis, first secretary to lord Dartmouth, and favourite to Mr. Harley, who is to introduce me to morrow morning. Lewis had with him one Mr. Dyet, a justice of peace, worth twenty thousand pounds, a commissioner of the stampoffice, and married to a sister of sir Philip Meadows, envoy to the emperor. I tell you this, because it is odds but this Mr. Dyet will be hanged[1]; for he is discovered to have counterfeited stamp paper, in which he was a commissioner: and, with his accomplices, has cheated the queen of a hundred thousand pounds. You will hear of it before this come to you, but may be not so particularly; and it is a very odd accident in such a man. Smoke Presto writing news to MD. I dined to day with lord Mountjoy at Kensington, and walked from thence this evening to town like an emperor. Remember that yesterday, October 2, was a cruel hard frost, with ice; and six days ago I was dying with heat. As thin as the town is, I have more dinners than ever, and am asked this month by some people, without being able to come for preengagements. Well, but

  1. He was tried at the Old Bailey, Jan. 15, 1710-11; and was acquitted.
I should