I should perhaps like others have astonished you with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact in the simplest man… - Jonathan Swift

A humour of reading books, except those of devotion or housewifery, is apt to turn a woman's brain... All affectation of knowledge beyond what is merely domestic, renders them vain, conceited and pretending.

As soon as I entered the house, my wife took me in her arms, and kissed me; at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal for so many years, I fell into a swoon for almost an hour. At the time I am writing, it is five years since my last return to England. During the first year, I could not endure my wife or children in my presence; the very smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them to eat in the same room. To this hour they dare not presume to touch my bread, or drink out of the same cup, neither was I ever able to let one of them take me by the hand. The first money I laid out was to buy two young stone-horses, which I keep in a good stable; and next to them, the groom is my greatest favourite, for I feel my spirits revived by the smell he contracts in the stable. My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me and friendship to each other.

Then gave him some familiar Thumps,
A College Joke to cure the Dumps.