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On a board in front stood a Hottentot driver, his black visage surmounted by a broad-brimmed straw hat ornamented by a few ostrich feathers twined round the crown, while his hand held a whip of Brobdignagian proportions, the stock being fully fourteen feet, and the lash upwards of twenty-four feet in length, with which he occasionally urged on the leaders, or drew blood from the animals beneath his feet, as well as from those intermediate in the span, whenever a rise in the ground or its unusual roughness required an additional exertion of their strength.

And as for this particular reigning family, these four great branches of the Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, and Clubs, Diana, fresh from the bath, never looked so enticing to the eager eyes of a losing player as their Brobdignagian dames, nor Apollo himself so beautiful as the ugly mugs of their lumbering kings.

How frequently, again, do we see the dimensions of a tall and embonpoint figure magnified to almost Brobdignagian proportions by a white dress, or a small woman reduced to Lilliputian size by a black dress!

I soon laughed at my Brobdignagian nonsense, and said, There is a telegraphic despatch passing. Now if I could only find out what it is! that would be something new in science, a discovery worth knowing, to be able to hear or feel the purport of a telegraphic message, simply by touching the wire along which it runs!

There are gas-works and foundries and factories, as in older communities. There are the Mission Mills, making the warmest blankets in the world, from the wool of the California sheep. There are the fruit and market gardens whose products have a Brobdignagian character. There are the immense stores of wine from California vineyards that are already competing with those of France and Germany.

I would as soon undertake to measure the difference between the height and bulk of the giant Gargantua and his Brobdignagian Majesty, as the difference of merit between my writings and Swift's. If any man takes a fancy to like my book, let him freely enjoy the entertainment it gives him, and drink to my memory in a bumper. If another likes Gulliver, let him toast Dr. Swift.

The present brobdignagian agricultural sectors in countries as diverse as Poland and Macedonia attest to this continuity of feudal practices. Both manual labour and trade were derided in the Ancient World. This derision was partially eroded during the Dark Ages. It survived only in relation to trade and other "non-productive" financial activities and even that not past the thirteenth century.

His whole mental atmosphere was thronged with spectral enginery; wheel within wheel; plans of hugest mechanism; Brobdignagian steam-engines; Niagaras of water-power; wind-mills with "sail-broad vans," like those of Satan in chaos, by the proper application of which every valley was to be exalted and every hill laid low; old forests seized by their shaggy tops and uprooted; old morasses drained; the tropics made cool; the eternal ices melted around the poles; the ocean itself covered with artificial islands, blossoming gardens of the blessed, rocking gently on the bosom of the deep.

It was lined with shelves on which stood serried rows of pots of home-made jam, jars of oil and vinegar, and huge tins of rice, vermicelli, and tapioca, in a corner a round zinc basin but a basin of Brobdignagian size stood under a cold water tap.

She hated her exaltation. She quoted inwardly, "They that are low need fear no fall," and trembled for what he might be moved to say next. There was a terrible opportunity of silence, for at first nobody talked. A crab of brobdignagian proportions engrossed the seniors.