reaping, picked me up between his thumb and forefinger and brought me close to his eyes, sixty feet above the ground. He looked at me with curiosity and blew my hair aside to get a better view of my face.
He called his friends and gently placed me on the ground. They all sat on the ground to take a good look at me. I walked slowly backward and forward, pulled off my hat and made a low bow towards the farmers. I tried to speak to them loudly in several languages. Each time I did so the farmer who picked me up held his ear very close to me but in vain. The farmer took me to his house and placed me at some distance on the dining table which was thirty feet high from the floor.
Dinner was brought for the farmer in a dish which was ten feet in diameter. The farmer's wife crumbled some bread and placed it before me. In the middle of the dinner I heard a noise behind me. It was the purring of a cat that was ten times larger than an ox. The farmer's wife was stroking him. Then entered the farmer's one year-old son in the arms of a lady. On seeing me the child grabbed me from the table and put my head into his mouth. I shouted so loudly that the baby dropped me. I would have broken my neck if the mother had not held her apron under me. Later she put me on her own bed and covered me with a clean white handkerchief. I slept dreaming of my home, my wife and my children. (Adopted from Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels')
| Glossary |
|---|
inhabitant (n):a person who lives in a particular place
monster (n):a big, cruel and frightening person
hedge (n):a row of closely planted low-growing trees forming a boundary
reaping hook (n):a curved blade with a short handle used to cut grass or crops
scream (v):to cry loudly because of fear or excitement or anger
apron (n):a piece of cloth that is worn to protect our clothes