The crowd in the streets is thick at midday, but you follow the banks of the Thames toward the London Bridge. You can hear fishermen showing off their hauls at the docks and sailors calling out from boats on the water. People on the docks are gathered around makeshift tabletops on barrels, openly gambling or listening to astrologists tell their horoscopes. “Protect your neck, little boy?” a woman calls out to you, holding up a necklace with a small ringing bell. “Or maybe your mum’s? Guaranteed protection against the Plague, helped hundreds survive last year…”

You turn away and push past a crowd watching a display of bear-baiting. You know it’s a popular sport here in town, but it’s still scary to you and you look away. When the bear roars in pain, the crowd starts laughing and cheering. You walk faster.

When you finally get to the bridge, it’s hard to imagine a script could still be here. This is the only bridge connecting north and south London, so it has a lot of foot traffic. Also, the heads of traitors to the crown peer down from spikes today. You can’t imagine Henry wanting to stay here for any length of time.

Towards the far side, you start to notice small pieces of torn-up parchment on the bridge. Maybe it’s the script! You gather them all up, and try to sort them out.

where could Henry have gone after this?

Hich line in this excerpt from jonathan swift's "a modest proposal" uses the rhetorical device of irony? and secondly, (there being a round million of creatures in humane figure throughout this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock, would leave them in debt two million of pounds sterling), adding those who are beggars by profession, to the bulk of farmers, cottagers and labourers, with their wives and children, who are beggars in effect; i desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year old, in the manner i prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes, as (they have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor cloaths to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather,) and the most inevitable prospect of intailing the like, or greater miseries, upon their breed for ever. i profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that( i have not the least personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the publick good of my country,) by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich.( i have no children, by which i can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing. reset next)