The Last of the Gullivers (15 page)

FROM THE DIARY OF YOUNG FRIGARY TIDDLIN

 

A Friday, late in September—

 

We are home and a new journey begins. Slack & I have made many friends in school & Mr. Topgallant is writing a chronicle of our lives in the other world.

Mr. Ickens has become a Popular Lecturer and Mr. Phlopp's eyebrows are starting to grow back. The brothers Butz are quiet & sullen, but I'm sure they'll come to love this place. Life is good again, because we found something we never knew we'd Lost.

But we'd lost it, that's for sure. Back in that other Time & Place, we thought we understood everything. We didn't Know how much we didn't Know. Now we do, and we have begun to Dream again . . .

So, nat'ralists observe, a flea

Hath smaller fleas that on him prey

And these have smaller yet to bite 'em,

And so proceed ad infinitum . . . Thus ev'ry poet, in his kind,

Is bit by him that comes behind.

On Poetry
, Jonathan Swift