enough in that country, if my littleness had
not exposed me to several ridiculous and troublesome accidents; some of
which I shall venture to relate. Glumdalclitch often carried me into the
gardens of the court in my smaller box, and would sometimes take me out
of it, and hold me in her hand, or set me down to walk. I remember,
before the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one day into those
gardens, and my nurse having set me down, he and I being close together,
near some dwarf apple trees, I must needs show my wit, by a silly
allusion between him and the trees, which happens to hold in their
language as it does in ours. Whereupon, the malicious rogue, watching
his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook it directly
over my head, by which a dozen apples, each of them near as large as a
Bristol barrel, came tumbling about my ears; one of them hit me on the
back as I chanced to stoop, and knocked me down flat on my face; but I
received no other hurt, and the dwarf was pardoned at my desire, because
I had given the provocation.

Another day, Glumdalclitch left me on a smooth grass-plot to divert
myself, while she walked at some distance with her governess. In the
meantime, there suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail, that I was
immediately by the force of it, struck to the ground: and when I was
down, the hailstones gave me such cruel bangs all over the body, as if I
had been pelted with tennis-balls; however, I made a shift to creep on
all fours, and shelter myself, by lying flat on my face, on the lee-side
of a border of lemon-thyme, but so bruised from head to foot, that I
could not go abroad in ten days. Neither is this at all to be wondered
at, because nature, in that country, observing the same proportion
through all her operations, a hailstone is near eighteen hundred times as
large as one in Europe; which I can assert upon experience, having been
so curious as to weigh and measure them.

But a more dangerous accident happened to me in the same garden, when my
little nurse, believing she had put me in a secure place (which I often
entreated her to do, that I might enjoy my own thoughts,) and having left
my box at home, to avoid the trouble of carrying it, went to another part
of the garden with her governess and some ladies of her acquaintance.
While she was absent, and out of hearing, a small white spaniel that
belonged to one of the chief gardeners, having got by accident into the