xposed 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 doth 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 four, 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 belonging to one of the chief gardeners, having got by
accident into the garden, happened to range near the place where I
lay; the dog, fo