enture 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.

[Illustration]

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 hail stones 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 hail-stone is near eighteen hundred times
as large as one in Europe, which I can assert upon experience, having
been so curious 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 governess and some ladies of her acquaintance,
she was absent and out of hearing, a small white belonging to one of the
chief gardeners, having got by accident into the garden, happened to
place where I lay: the dog, following the scent, came directly up, and
taking me in his mouth, ran straight to his master, wagging