'Twas thus, sitting by the lake and gazing down the great perspective cut
in the trees, he saw the peasants going homeward up the hill, no greater
than ants, and looking into my eyes (from which and my name he called me
Star, and later, Stella), he said:--

"What say you, Mrs Star, if these folk were really no bigger than now they
seem? What if this country were peopled by a race of little creeping
Hop-o'-my-Thumbs?"

"O rare, rare!" I cried, and clapt my hands. "Tell me the history of them,
Mr Swift, and their little homely ways and houses like bees' cells for
size."

And as I looked up and the words came from him, truly all was visible
before me. 'Tis a gift Mr Swift hath had from the beginning, that men
should see what he would. And women,--O Father Almighty,--women!

So that was the beginning of Gulliver his travels, that being told for a
child's pleasure hath since become a world's wonder. It had not then the
meanings he gave it later, nor were there any Yahoos.

If I ask myself when this harmless love did change to a woman's, I cannot
tell, because with my growth it grew. But the first pain it brought (and
sure pain is love's shadow) was an: 1697, when I was sixteen years of age.
For I sat by the housekeeper's window, and Sir William and Mr Swift were
pacing the path, their voices coming and going. Mr Swift was now dressed
as the young Levite he sometimes called himself since he returned from
Ireland a clergyman; and he walked with his eyes fixed moodily on the
ground, listening to Sir William.