 in
Cheapside. My body had been some time dead before I was at liberty to quit it,
lest it should by any accident return to life: this is an injunction imposed on
all souls by the eternal law of fate, to prevent the inconveniences which would
follow. As soon as the destined period was expired (being no longer than till
the body is become perfectly cold and stiff) I began to move; but found myself
under a difficulty of making my escape, for the mouth or door was shut, so that
it was impossible for me to go out at it; and the windows, vulgarly called the
eyes, were so closely pulled down by the fingers of a nurse, that I could by no
means open them. At last I perceived a beam of light glimmering at the top of
the house (for such I may call the body I had been inclosed in), whither
ascending, I gently let myself down through a kind of chimney, and issued out at
the nostrils.
    No prisoner discharged from a long confinement ever tasted the sweets of
liberty with a more exquisite relish than I enjoyed in this delivery from a
dungeon wherein I had been detained upwards of forty years, and with much the
same kind of regard I cast my eyes2 backwards upon it.
    My friends and relations had all quitted the room, being all (as I plainly
overheard) very loudly quarrelling below stairs about my will; there was only an
old woman left above to guard the body, as I apprehend. She was in a fast sleep,
occasioned, as from her savour it seemed, by a comfortable dose of gin. I had no
pleasure in this company, and, therefore, as the window was wide open, I sallied
forth into the open air: but, to my great astonishment, found myself unable to
fly, which I had always during my habitation in the body conceived of spirits;
however, I came so lightly to the ground that I did not hurt myself; and, though
I had not the gift of flying (owing probably to my having neither feathers nor
wings), I was capable of hopping such a prodigious way at once, that it served
my turn almost as well.
    I had not hopped far before I perceived a tall young gentleman in a silk
waistcoat, with a wing on his left heel, a garland on his head, and a caduceus
in his right hand.3 I thought I had seen this person before, but had not time to
recollect where, when he called out to me and asked me how long I had been
departed. I
