they pretended to give her a lamb, and yet as soon as it was fat sold it
to a butcher. For my own part I may truly affirm that I was less
concerned than my nurse. I had a strong hope, which left me, that I
should one day recover my liberty; to the ignominy of being carried
about for a monster, I considered myself to be a perfect stranger in the
country, and that such a misfortune could never be charged upon me as a
reproach if ever I should return to England; since the king of Great
Britain himself, in my condition, must have undergone the same distress.

My master, pursuant to the advice of his friend, carried me in a box
the next market-day, to the neighboring town, and took along with him
his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion[48] behind him. The box
was close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and
a few gimlet holes to let in air. The girl had been so careful as to put
the quilt of her baby's bed into it, for me to lie down on. However, I
was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though it were but
of half an hour. For the horse went about forty feet at every step, and
trotted so high that the agitation was equal to the rising and falling
of a ship in a great storm, but much more frequent; our journey was
somewhat farther than from London to St. Alban's. My master alighted at
an inn which he used to frequent; and after consulting a while with the
innkeeper and making some necessary preparations, he hired the
_grultrud_, or crier, to give notice through the town, of a strange
creature to be seen at the sign of the Green Eagle, not so big as a
_splacnuck_ (an animal in that country, very finely shaped, about six
feet long), and in every part of the body resembling a human creature,
could speak several words, and perform a hundred diverting tricks.

I was placed upon a table in the largest room of the inn, which might be
near three hundred feet square. My little nurse stood on a low stool