e. For the law thinks it
to be a reasonable indulgence that those who are condemned, without
any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world,
should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife.

"As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are
looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their
estates, only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and
the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that
period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or
profit, they cannot purchase lands or take leases, neither are they
allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not
even for the decision of meers and bounds.

"At ninety they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no
distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get
without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still
continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget
the common appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of
those who are their nearest friends and relatives. For the same
reason, they can never amuse themselves with reading, because their
memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence
to the end; and by this defect they are deprived of the only
entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable.

"The language of this country being always on the flux, the
Struldbrugs of one age do not understand those of another; neither
are they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation
(further than by a few general words) with their neighbours, the
mortals; and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like
foreigners in their own country.

"This was the account given me of the Struldbrugs, as near as I can
remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the
youngest not above two hundred years old, who were brought to me
several times by some of my friends; but although they were told
'that I was a great traveller, and had seen all the world', they had
not the least curiosity to ask me a single question; only desired I
would give them slumskudask, or a token of remembrance; which is a
modest way of begging, to avoid the law that strictly f