If they can avoid casualties, they die only of old
age, and are buried in the obscurest places that can
be found, their friends and relations expressing neither
joy nor grief at their departure; nor does the dying
person discover the least regret that he is leaving
the world, any more than if he were upon returning
home from a visit to one of his neighbours.
I remember my master having once made an appointment
with a friend and his family to come to his house,
upon some affair of importance: on the day fixed,
the mistress and her two children came very late;
she made two excuses, first for her husband, who,
as she said, happened that very morning to shnuwnh.
The word is strongly expressive in their language,
but not easily rendered into English; it signifies,
“to retire to his first mother.”
Her excuse for not coming sooner, was, that her husband
dying late in the morning, she was a good while consulting
her servants about a convenient place where his body
should be laid; and I observed, she behaved herself
at our house as cheerfully as the rest. She
died about three months after.
They live generally to seventy, or seventy-five years,
very seldom to fourscore. Some weeks before
their death, they feel a gradual decay; but without
pain. During this time they are much visited
by their friends, because they cannot go abroad with
their usual ease and satisfaction. However,
about ten days before their death, which they seldom
fail in computing, they return the visits that have
been made them by those who are nearest in the neighbourhood,
being carried in a convenient sledge drawn by Yahoos;
which vehicle they use, not only upon this occasion,
but when they grow old, upon long journeys, or when
they are lamed by any accident: and therefore
when the dying Houyhnhnms return those visits, they
take a solemn leave of their friends, as if they were
going to some remote part of the country, where they
designed to pass the rest of their lives.
I know not whether it may be worth observing, that
the Houyhnhnms have no word in their language to express
any thing that is evil, except what they borrow from
the deformities or ill qualities of the Yahoos.
Thus they denote the folly of a servant, an omission
of a child, a stone that cuts their feet, a continuance
of foul or unseasonable weather, and the like, by
adding to each the epithet of Yahoo. For instance,
hhnm Yahoo; whnaholm Yahoo, ynlhmndwihlma Yahoo, and
an ill-contrived house ynholmhnmrohlnw Yahoo.
I could, with great pleasure, enlarge further upon
the manners and virtues of this excellent people;
but intending in a short time to publish a volume
by itself, expressly upon that subject, I refer the
reader thither; and, in the mean time, proceed to relate
my own sad catastrophe.
CHAPTER X.
[The author’s economy, and happy life, among
the Houyhnhnms. His great improvement in virtue
by conversing with them. Their conversations.
The author has notice given him by his master, that
he must depart from the country. He falls into
a swoon for grief; but submits. He contrives
and finishes a canoe by the help of a fellow-servant,
and puts to sea at a venture.]
