Lemuel Gulliver

Yeah.

As a matter of fact, Gulliver's Travels with Jack Black as Lemuel Gulliver was the reason that she wasn't able to accept the Black Widow Marvel role when it came around.

What?

Contractual obligations.

And last week we talked about Dickens' Great Expectations.

And today we're going to be talking about Gulliver's Travels, A Poke in an Eye from a Preacher.

Now this morning someone came up to me and said, Oh, I'm so excited.

You're preaching on Gilligan's Island.

How many grew up with Gilligan's Island? Yeah, yeah, so a bunch of you get it, you know, and it would be fun, wouldn't it? I could sing the song, right? This is the story of a castaway.

I won't punish you with that.

So we're going to be talking about Gulliver's Travels, which was written, incidentally, by Jonathan Swift in, catch the date, 1726.

So it's a good time to talk about this because this is the 300th anniversary of this great classic, many call it a masterpiece.

My dear Harry, when you are a big man, perhaps you will go out into the world and see many strange things.

I cannot promise that you will find any people so little as the Lilliputians, nor any quite so tall as those that Mr. Lemuel Gulliver found in Robdingnag.

But undoubtedly there are yet many small folks in the world, and a few great ones.

Did not Mr. Stanley himself find in Africa a race of dwarfs so little that he called them pygmies? Who knows, then, what you may discover when you are grown up? Affectionately yours, John Lang Part 1.

So when a man said good-bye to his friends and sailed away into the unknown, generally very many years passed before he came back if ever he came back at all for the dangers of the seas were then far greater than they now are and if a ship was not wrecked some dark night on an unknown island or uncharted reef there was always the probability of meeting a pirate vessel and of having to fight for life and liberty Steam has nowadays nearly done away with pirates, except on the China coast and in a few other out-of-the-way places.

But things were very different long ago, before steamers were invented, and sailors then, when they came home, had many very surprising things to tell their friends, many astonishing adventures to speak of amongst the strange peoples that they said they had met in far-off lands.

One man who saw more wonderful things than anyone else was named Lemuel Gulliver, and I will try to tell you a little about two of his voyages.

Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire, and when he was only fourteen years old he was sent to Emanuel College, Cambridge.