was not so eager, from the continual example of the
_struldbrugs_ before their eyes.

"That the system of living contrived by me, was unreasonable and unjust;
because it supposed a perpetuity of youth, health, and vigour, which no
man could be so foolish to hope, however extravagant he may be in his
wishes. That the question therefore was not, whether a man would choose
to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health;
but how he would pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages
which old age brings along with it. For although few men will avow their
desires of being immortal, upon such hard conditions, yet in the two
kingdoms before mentioned, of Balnibarbi and Japan, he observed that
every man desired to put off death some time longer, let it approach ever
so late: and he rarely heard of any man who died willingly, except he
were incited by the extremity of grief or torture. And he appealed to
me, whether in those countries I had travelled, as well as my own, I had
not observed the same general disposition."

After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the _struldbrugs_
among them. He said, "they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty
years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected,
increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from
their own confession: for otherwise, there not being above two or three
of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general
observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the
extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies
and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the
dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative,
peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship,
and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their
grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions.
But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed,
are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By
reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all
possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and
repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they
themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of
anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and
midd