[The humours and dispositions of the Laputians described.
An account of their learning. Of the king and
his court. The author’s reception there.
The inhabitants subject to fear and disquietudes.
An account of the women.]
At my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of
people, but those who stood nearest seemed to be of
better quality. They beheld me with all the
marks and circumstances of wonder; neither indeed was
I much in their debt, having never till then seen a
race of mortals so singular in their shapes, habits,
and countenances. Their heads were all reclined,
either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes
turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith.
Their outward garments were adorned with the figures
of suns, moons, and stars; interwoven with those of
fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords,
and many other instruments of music, unknown to us
in Europe. I observed, here and there, many in
the habit of servants, with a blown bladder, fastened
like a flail to the end of a stick, which they carried
in their hands. In each bladder was a small
quantity of dried peas, or little pebbles, as I was
afterwards informed. With these bladders, they
now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those
who stood near them, of which practice I could not
then conceive the meaning. It seems the minds
of these people are so taken up with intense speculations,
that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses
of others, without being roused by some external taction
upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason,
those persons who are able to afford it always keep
a flapper (the original is climenole) in their family,
as one of their domestics; nor ever walk abroad, or
make visits, without him. And the business of
this officer is, when two, three, or more persons
are in company, gently to strike with his bladder
the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear
of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself.
This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend
his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give
him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always
so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest
danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing
his head against every post; and in the streets, of
justling others, or being justled himself into the
kennel.
It was necessary to give the reader this information,
without which he would be at the same loss with me
to understand the proceedings of these people, as
they conducted me up the stairs to the top of the
island, and from thence to the royal palace.
While we were ascending, they forgot several times
what they were about, and left me to myself, till
their memories were again roused by their flappers;
for they appeared altogether unmoved by the sight of
my foreign habit and countenance, and by the shouts
of the vulgar, whose thoughts and minds were more
disengaged.
