le-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or
particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than
upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to
be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet
with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which
abound in others.

"If a _struldbrug_ happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is
dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the
younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a
reasonable indulgence, that those who are condemned, without any fault of
their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their
misery doubled by the load of a wife.

"As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked
on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates; only
a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are
maintained at the public charge. After that period, they are held
incapable of any employment of trust or profit; they cannot purchase
lands, or take leases; neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any
cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and
bounds.

"At ninety, they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no
distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without
relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue,
without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common
appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are
their nearest friends and relations. For the same reason, they never can
amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to
carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this
defect, they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might
otherwise be capable.

"The language of this country being always upon the flux, the
_struldbrugs_ of one age do not understand those of another; neither are
they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation (farther
than by a few general words) with their neighbours the mortals; and thus
they lie under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own
country."

This was the account given me of the _struldbrugs_, as near as I can
remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest
not above two hundred y