The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift/Volume 12/From Jonathan Swift to Thomas Sheridan - 3
TO DR. SHERIDAN.
NO, I cannot possibly be with you so soon, there are too many rivers, bogs, and mountains between; besides, when I leave this, I shall make one or two short visits in my way to Dublin, and hope to be in town by the end of this month; though it will be a bad time, in the hurry of your lousy pt. Your dream is wrong, for this bishop is not able to lift a cat upon my shoulders; but if you are for a curacy of twenty-five pounds a year, and ride five miles every Sunday to preach to six beggars, have at you: and yet this is no ill country, and the bishop has made, in four months, twelve miles of ditches from his house to the Shannon, if you talk of improving. How are you this moment? Do you love or hate Quilca the most of all places? Are you in or out of humour with the world, your friends, your wife, and your school? Are the ladies in town or in the country? If I knew, I would write to them, and how are they in health? Quilca (let me see) (you see I can (if I please) make parentheses as well as others) is about a hundred miles from Clonfert; and I am half weary with the four hundred I have rid. With love, and service, and so, adieu.