The lord went on. These struldbrugs, he said, are found only in Luggnagg. There are none in Balnibarbi or in Japan. He had been the king’s ambassador to both countries, and their people could hardly believe such a thing was possible.
From Gulliver’s astonishment when he first heard of it, the lord said, Gulliver too had taken it as something quite new and scarcely credible.
In those two kingdoms he had talked with many people. And he had seen that long life was the universal wish of mankind. A man with one foot in the grave holds the other back as hard as he can. The oldest still hope to live one day more and look on death as the greatest evil. Only on this island of Luggnagg, he said, was the appetite for living not so eager, because the struldbrugs were always before their eyes.