The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
by
Laurence Sterne

Part 10 out of 10



but a poor negro girl, with a bunch of white feathers slightly tied to the
end of a long cane, flapping away flies--not killing them.--'Tis a pretty
picture! said my uncle Toby--she had suffered persecution, Trim, and had
learnt mercy--

--She was good, an' please your honour, from nature, as well as from
hardships; and there are circumstances in the story of that poor friendless
slut, that would melt a heart of stone, said Trim; and some dismal winter's
evening, when your honour is in the humour, they shall be told you with the
rest of Tom's story, for it makes a part of it--

Then do not forget, Trim, said my uncle Toby.

A negro has a soul? an' please your honour, said the corporal (doubtingly).

I am not much versed, corporal, quoth my uncle Toby, in things of that
kind; but I suppose, God would not leave him without one, any more than
thee or me--

--It would be putting one sadly over the head of another, quoth the
corporal.

It would so; said my uncle Toby. Why then, an' please your honour, is a
black wench to be used worse than a white one?

I can give no reason, said my uncle Toby--

--Only, cried the corporal, shaking his head, because she has no one to
stand up for her--

--'Tis that very thing, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby,--which recommends her to
protection--and her brethren with her; 'tis the fortune of war which has
put the whip into our hands now--where it may be hereafter, heaven knows!--
but be it where it will, the brave, Trim! will not use it unkindly.

--God forbid, said the corporal.

Amen, responded my uncle Toby, laying his hand upon his heart.

The corporal returned to his story, and went on--but with an embarrassment
in doing it, which here and there a reader in this world will not be able
to comprehend; for by the many sudden transitions all along, from one kind
and cordial passion to another, in getting thus far on his way, he had lost
the sportable key of his voice, which gave sense and spirit to his tale:
he attempted twice to resume it, but could not please himself; so giving a
stout hem! to rally back the retreating spirits, and aiding nature at the
same time with his left arm a kimbo on one side, and with his right a
little extended, supporting her on the other--the corporal got as near the
note as he could; and in that attitude, continued his story.



Chapter 4.LXVI.

As Tom, an' please your honour, had no business at that time with the
Moorish girl, he passed on into the room beyond, to talk to the Jew's widow
about love--and this pound of sausages; and being, as I have told your
honour, an open cheary-hearted lad, with his character wrote in his looks
and carriage, he took a chair, and without much apology, but with great
civility at the same time, placed it close to her at the table, and sat
down.

There is nothing so awkward, as courting a woman, an' please your honour,
whilst she is making sausages--So Tom began a discourse upon them; first,
gravely,--'as how they were made--with what meats, herbs, and spices.'--
Then a little gayly,--as, 'With what skins--and if they never burst--
Whether the largest were not the best?'--and so on--taking care only as he
went along, to season what he had to say upon sausages, rather under than
over;--that he might have room to act in--

It was owing to the neglect of that very precaution, said my uncle Toby,
laying his hand upon Trim's shoulder, that Count De la Motte lost the
battle of Wynendale: he pressed too speedily into the wood; which if he
had not done, Lisle had not fallen into our hands, nor Ghent and Bruges,
which both followed her example; it was so late in the year, continued my
uncle Toby, and so terrible a season came on, that if things had not fallen
out as they did, our troops must have perish'd in the open field.--

--Why, therefore, may not battles, an' please your honour, as well as
marriages, be made in heaven?--my uncle Toby mused--

Religion inclined him to say one thing, and his high idea of military skill
tempted him to say another; so not being able to frame a reply exactly to
his mind--my uncle Toby said nothing at all; and the corporal finished his
story.

As Tom perceived, an' please your honour, that he gained ground, and that
all he had said upon the subject of sausages was kindly taken, he went on
to help her a little in making them.--First, by taking hold of the ring of
the sausage whilst she stroked the forced meat down with her hand--then by
cutting the strings into proper lengths, and holding them in his hand,
whilst she took them out one by one--then, by putting them across her
mouth, that she might take them out as she wanted them--and so on from
little to more, till at last he adventured to tie the sausage himself,
whilst she held the snout.--

--Now a widow, an' please your honour, always chuses a second husband as
unlike the first as she can: so the affair was more than half settled in
her mind before Tom mentioned it.

She made a feint however of defending herself, by snatching up a sausage:--
Tom instantly laid hold of another--

But seeing Tom's had more gristle in it--

She signed the capitulation--and Tom sealed it; and there was an end of the
matter.



Chapter 4.LXVII.

All womankind, continued Trim, (commenting upon his story) from the highest
to the lowest, an' please your honour, love jokes; the difficulty is to
know how they chuse to have them cut; and there is no knowing that, but by
trying, as we do with our artillery in the field, by raising or letting
down their breeches, till we hit the mark.--

--I like the comparison, said my uncle Toby, better than the thing itself--

--Because your honour, quoth the corporal, loves glory, more than pleasure.

I hope, Trim, answered my uncle Toby, I love mankind more than either; and
as the knowledge of arms tends so apparently to the good and quiet of the
world--and particularly that branch of it which we have practised together
in our bowling-green, has no object but to shorten the strides of Ambition,
and intrench the lives and fortunes of the few, from the plunderings of the
many--whenever that drum beats in our ears, I trust, corporal, we shall
neither of us want so much humanity and fellow-feeling, as to face about
and march.

In pronouncing this, my uncle Toby faced about, and march'd firmly as at
the head of his company--and the faithful corporal, shouldering his stick,
and striking his hand upon his coat-skirt as he took his first step--
march'd close behind him down the avenue.

--Now what can their two noddles be about? cried my father to my mother--by
all that's strange, they are besieging Mrs. Wadman in form, and are
marching round her house to mark out the lines of circumvallation.

I dare say, quoth my mother--But stop, dear Sir--for what my mother dared
to say upon the occasion--and what my father did say upon it--with her
replies and his rejoinders, shall be read, perused, paraphrased, commented,
and descanted upon--or to say it all in a word, shall be thumb'd over by
Posterity in a chapter apart--I say, by Posterity--and care not, if I
repeat the word again--for what has this book done more than the Legation
of Moses, or the Tale of a Tub, that it may not swim down the gutter of
Time along with them?

I will not argue the matter: Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace
tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen: the days and hours of it,
more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying
over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more--
every thing presses on--whilst thou art twisting that lock,--see! it grows
grey; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which
follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to
make.--

--Heaven have mercy upon us both!



Chapter 4.LXVIII.

Now, for what the world thinks of that ejaculation--I would not give a
groat.



Chapter 4.LXIX.

My mother had gone with her left arm twisted in my father's right, till
they had got to the fatal angle of the old garden wall, where Doctor Slop
was overthrown by Obadiah on the coach-horse: as this was directly
opposite to the front of Mrs. Wadman's house, when my father came to it, he
gave a look across; and seeing my uncle Toby and the corporal within ten
paces of the door, he turn'd about--'Let us just stop a moment, quoth my
father, and see with what ceremonies my brother Toby and his man Trim make
their first entry--it will not detain us, added my father, a single
minute:'

--No matter, if it be ten minutes, quoth my mother.

--It will not detain us half one; said my father.

The corporal was just then setting in with the story of his brother Tom and
the Jew's widow: the story went on--and on--it had episodes in it--it came
back, and went on--and on again; there was no end of it--the reader found
it very long--

--G.. help my father! he pish'd fifty times at every new attitude, and gave
the corporal's stick, with all its flourishings and danglings, to as many
devils as chose to accept of them.

When issues of events like these my father is waiting for, are hanging in
the scales of fate, the mind has the advantage of changing the principle of
expectation three times, without which it would not have power to see it
out.

Curiosity governs the first moment; and the second moment is all oeconomy
to justify the expence of the first--and for the third, fourth, fifth, and
sixth moments, and so on to the day of judgment--'tis a point of Honour.

I need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this all to
Patience; but that Virtue, methinks, has extent of dominion sufficient of
her own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few dismantled
castles which Honour has left him upon the earth.

My father stood it out as well as he could with these three auxiliaries to
the end of Trim's story; and from thence to the end of my uncle Toby's
panegyrick upon arms, in the chapter following it; when seeing, that
instead of marching up to Mrs. Wadman's door, they both faced about and
march'd down the avenue diametrically opposite to his expectation--he broke
out at once with that little subacid soreness of humour, which, in certain
situations, distinguished his character from that of all other men.



Chapter 4.LXX.

--'Now what can their two noddles be about?' cried my father. . .&c. . ..

I dare say, said my mother, they are making fortifications--

--Not on Mrs. Wadman's premises! cried my father, stepping back--

I suppose not: quoth my mother.

I wish, said my father, raising his voice, the whole science of
fortification at the devil, with all its trumpery of saps, mines, blinds,
gabions, fausse-brays and cuvetts--

--They are foolish things--said my mother.

Now she had a way, which, by the bye, I would this moment give away my
purple jerkin, and my yellow slippers into the bargain, if some of your
reverences would imitate--and that was, never to refuse her assent and
consent to any proposition my father laid before her, merely because she
did not understand it, or had no ideas of the principal word or term of
art, upon which the tenet or proposition rolled. She contented herself
with doing all that her godfathers and godmothers promised for her--but no
more; and so would go on using a hard word twenty years together--and
replying to it too, if it was a verb, in all its moods and tenses, without
giving herself any trouble to enquire about it.

This was an eternal source of misery to my father, and broke the neck, at
the first setting out, of more good dialogues between them, than could have
done the most petulant contradiction--the few which survived were the
better for the cuvetts--

--'They are foolish things;' said my mother.

--Particularly the cuvetts; replied my father.

'Tis enough--he tasted the sweet of triumph--and went on.

--Not that they are, properly speaking, Mrs. Wadman's premises, said my
father, partly correcting himself--because she is but tenant for life--

--That makes a great difference--said my mother--

--In a fool's head, replied my father--

Unless she should happen to have a child--said my mother--

--But she must persuade my brother Toby first to get her one--

To be sure, Mr. Shandy, quoth my mother.

--Though if it comes to persuasion--said my father--Lord have mercy upon
them.

Amen: said my mother, piano.

Amen: cried my father, fortissime.

Amen: said my mother again--but with such a sighing cadence of personal
pity at the end of it, as discomfited every fibre about my father--he
instantly took out his almanack; but before he could untie it, Yorick's
congregation coming out of church, became a full answer to one half of his
business with it--and my mother telling him it was a sacrament day--left
him as little in doubt, as to the other part--He put his almanack into his
pocket.

The first Lord of the Treasury thinking of ways and means, could not have
returned home with a more embarrassed look.



Chapter 4.LXXI.

Upon looking back from the end of the last chapter, and surveying the
texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and
the three following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted to
keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book
would not hold together a single year: nor is it a poor creeping digression
(which but for the name of, a man might continue as well going on in the
king's highway) which will do the business--no; if it is to be a
digression, it must be a good frisky one, and upon a frisky subject too,
where neither the horse or his rider are to be caught, but by rebound.

The only difficulty, is raising powers suitable to the nature of the
service: Fancy is capricious--Wit must not be searched for--and Pleasantry
(good-natured slut as she is) will not come in at a call, was an empire to
be laid at her feet.

--The best way for a man, is to say his prayers--

Only if it puts him in mind of his infirmities and defects as well ghostly
as bodily--for that purpose, he will find himself rather worse after he has
said them than before--for other purposes, better.

For my own part, there is not a way either moral or mechanical under heaven
that I could think of, which I have not taken with myself in this case:
sometimes by addressing myself directly to the soul herself, and arguing
the point over and over again with her upon the extent of her own
faculties--

--I never could make them an inch the wider--

Then by changing my system, and trying what could be made of it upon the
body, by temperance, soberness, and chastity: These are good, quoth I, in
themselves--they are good, absolutely;--they are good, relatively;--they
are good for health--they are good for happiness in this world--they are
good for happiness in the next--

In short, they were good for every thing but the thing wanted; and there
they were good for nothing, but to leave the soul just as heaven made it:
as for the theological virtues of faith and hope, they give it courage; but
then that snivelling virtue of Meekness (as my father would always call it)
takes it quite away again, so you are exactly where you started.

Now in all common and ordinary cases, there is nothing which I have found
to answer so well as this--

--Certainly, if there is any dependence upon Logic, and that I am not
blinded by self-love, there must be something of true genius about me,
merely upon this symptom of it, that I do not know what envy is: for never
do I hit upon any invention or device which tendeth to the furtherance of
good writing, but I instantly make it public; willing that all mankind
should write as well as myself.

--Which they certainly will, when they think as little.



Chapter 4.LXXII.

Now in ordinary cases, that is, when I am only stupid, and the thoughts
rise heavily and pass gummous through my pen--

Or that I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of
infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of it for my soul; so
must be obliged to go on writing like a Dutch commentator to the end of the
chapter, unless something be done--

--I never stand conferring with pen and ink one moment; for if a pinch of
snuff, or a stride or two across the room will not do the business for me--
I take a razor at once; and having tried the edge of it upon the palm of my
hand, without further ceremony, except that of first lathering my beard, I
shave it off; taking care only if I do leave a hair, that it be not a grey
one: this done, I change my shirt--put on a better coat--send for my last
wig--put my topaz ring upon my finger; and in a word, dress myself from one
end to the other of me, after my best fashion.

Now the devil in hell must be in it, if this does not do: for consider,
Sir, as every man chuses to be present at the shaving of his own beard
(though there is no rule without an exception), and unavoidably sits over-
against himself the whole time it is doing, in case he has a hand in it--
the Situation, like all others, has notions of her own to put into the
brain.--

--I maintain it, the conceits of a rough-bearded man, are seven years more
terse and juvenile for one single operation; and if they did not run a risk
of being quite shaved away, might be carried up by continual shavings, to
the highest pitch of sublimity--How Homer could write with so long a beard,
I don't know--and as it makes against my hypothesis, I as little care--But
let us return to the Toilet.

Ludovicus Sorbonensis makes this entirely an affair of the body (Greek) as
he calls it--but he is deceived: the soul and body are joint-sharers in
every thing they get: A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloth'd at the
same time; and if he dresses like a gentleman, every one of them stands
presented to his imagination, genteelized along with him--so that he has
nothing to do, but take his pen, and write like himself.

For this cause, when your honours and reverences would know whether I writ
clean and fit to be read, you will be able to judge full as well by looking
into my Laundress's bill, as my book: there is one single month in which I
can make it appear, that I dirtied one and thirty shirts with clean
writing; and after all, was more abus'd, cursed, criticis'd, and
confounded, and had more mystic heads shaken at me, for what I had wrote in
that one month, than in all the other months of that year put together.

--But their honours and reverences had not seen my bills.



Chapter 4.LXXIII.

As I never had any intention of beginning the Digression, I am making all
this preparation for, till I come to the 74th chapter--I have this chapter
to put to whatever use I think proper--I have twenty this moment ready for
it--I could write my chapter of Button-holes in it--

Or my chapter of Pishes, which should follow them--

Or my chapter of Knots, in case their reverences have done with them--they
might lead me into mischief: the safest way is to follow the track of the
learned, and raise objections against what I have been writing, tho' I
declare before-hand, I know no more than my heels how to answer them.

And first, it may be said, there is a pelting kind of thersitical satire,
as black as the very ink 'tis wrote with--(and by the bye, whoever says so,
is indebted to the muster-master general of the Grecian army, for suffering
the name of so ugly and foul-mouth'd a man as Thersites to continue upon
his roll--for it has furnish'd him with an epithet)--in these productions
he will urge, all the personal washings and scrubbings upon earth do a
sinking genius no sort of good--but just the contrary, inasmuch as the
dirtier the fellow is, the better generally he succeeds in it.

To this, I have no other answer--at least ready--but that the Archbishop of
Benevento wrote his nasty Romance of the Galatea, as all the world knows,
in a purple coat, waistcoat, and purple pair of breeches; and that the
penance set him of writing a commentary upon the book of the Revelations,
as severe as it was look'd upon by one part of the world, was far from
being deem'd so, by the other, upon the single account of that Investment.

Another objection, to all this remedy, is its want of universality;
forasmuch as the shaving part of it, upon which so much stress is laid, by
an unalterable law of nature excludes one half of the species entirely from
its use: all I can say is, that female writers, whether of England, or of
France, must e'en go without it--

As for the Spanish ladies--I am in no sort of distress--



Chapter 4.LXXIV.

The seventy-fourth chapter is come at last; and brings nothing with it but
a sad signature of 'How our pleasures slip from under us in this world!'

For in talking of my digression--I declare before heaven I have made it!
What a strange creature is mortal man! said she.

'Tis very true, said I--but 'twere better to get all these things out of
our heads, and return to my uncle Toby.



Chapter 4.LXXV.

When my uncle Toby and the corporal had marched down to the bottom of the
avenue, they recollected their business lay the other way; so they faced
about and marched up straight to Mrs. Wadman's door.

I warrant your honour; said the corporal, touching his Montero-cap with his
hand, as he passed him in order to give a knock at the door--My uncle Toby,
contrary to his invariable way of treating his faithful servant, said
nothing good or bad: the truth was, he had not altogether marshal'd his
ideas; he wish'd for another conference, and as the corporal was mounting
up the three steps before the door--he hem'd twice--a portion of my uncle
Toby's most modest spirits fled, at each expulsion, towards the corporal;
he stood with the rapper of the door suspended for a full minute in his
hand, he scarce knew why. Bridget stood perdue within, with her finger and
her thumb upon the latch, benumb'd with expectation; and Mrs. Wadman, with
an eye ready to be deflowered again, sat breathless behind the window-
curtain of her bed-chamber, watching their approach.

Trim! said my uncle Toby--but as he articulated the word, the minute
expired, and Trim let fall the rapper.

My uncle Toby perceiving that all hopes of a conference were knock'd on the
head by it--whistled Lillabullero.



Chapter 4.LXXVI.

As Mrs. Bridget's finger and thumb were upon the latch, the corporal did
not knock as often as perchance your honour's taylor--I might have taken my
example something nearer home; for I owe mine, some five and twenty pounds
at least, and wonder at the man's patience--

--But this is nothing at all to the world: only 'tis a cursed thing to be
in debt; and there seems to be a fatality in the exchequers of some poor
princes, particularly those of our house, which no Economy can bind down in
irons: for my own part, I'm persuaded there is not any one prince,
prelate, pope, or potentate, great or small upon earth, more desirous in
his heart of keeping straight with the world than I am--or who takes more
likely means for it. I never give above half a guinea--or walk with boots-
-or cheapen tooth-picks--or lay out a shilling upon a band-box the year
round; and for the six months I'm in the country, I'm upon so small a
scale, that with all the good temper in the world, I outdo Rousseau, a bar
length--for I keep neither man or boy, or horse, or cow, or dog, or cat, or
any thing that can eat or drink, except a thin poor piece of a Vestal (to
keep my fire in), and who has generally as bad an appetite as myself--but
if you think this makes a philosopher of me--I would not, my good people!
give a rush for your judgments.

True philosophy--but there is no treating the subject whilst my uncle is
whistling Lillabullero.

--Let us go into the house.



Chapter 4.LXXVII.

(blank page)



Chapter 4.LXXVIII.

(blank page)



Chapter 4.LXXIX.

--(two blank paragraphs)--

--You shall see the very place, Madam; said my uncle Toby.

Mrs. Wadman blush'd--look'd towards the door--turn'd pale--blush'd slightly
again--recover'd her natural colour--blush'd worse than ever; which, for
the sake of the unlearned reader, I translate thus--

'L..d! I cannot look at it--

'What would the world say if I look'd at it?

'I should drop down, if I look'd at it--

'I wish I could look at it--

'There can be no sin in looking at it.

--'I will look at it.'

Whilst all this was running through Mrs. Wadman's imagination, my uncle
Toby had risen from the sopha, and got to the other side of the parlour
door, to give Trim an order about it in the passage--

. . .--I believe it is in the garret, said my uncle Toby--I saw it there,
an' please your honour, this morning, answered Trim--Then prithee, step
directly for it, Trim, said my uncle Toby, and bring it into the parlour.

The corporal did not approve of the orders, but most cheerfully obeyed
them. The first was not an act of his will--the second was; so he put on
his Montero-cap, and went as fast as his lame knee would let him. My uncle
Toby returned into the parlour, and sat himself down again upon the sopha.

--You shall lay your finger upon the place--said my uncle Toby.--I will not
touch it, however, quoth Mrs. Wadman to herself.

This requires a second translation:--it shews what little knowledge is got
by mere words--we must go up to the first springs.

Now in order to clear up the mist which hangs upon these three pages, I
must endeavour to be as clear as possible myself.

Rub your hands thrice across your foreheads--blow your noses--cleanse your
emunctories--sneeze, my good people!--God bless you--

Now give me all the help you can.



Chapter 4.LXXX.

As there are fifty different ends (counting all ends in--as well civil as
religious) for which a woman takes a husband, the first sets about and
carefully weighs, then separates and distinguishes in her mind, which of
all that number of ends is hers; then by discourse, enquiry, argumentation,
and inference, she investigates and finds out whether she has got hold of
the right one--and if she has--then, by pulling it gently this way and that
way, she further forms a judgment, whether it will not break in the
drawing.

The imagery under which Slawkenbergius impresses this upon the reader's
fancy, in the beginning of his third Decad, is so ludicrous, that the
honour I bear the sex, will not suffer me to quote it--otherwise it is not
destitute of humour.

'She first, saith Slawkenbergius, stops the asse, and holding his halter in
her left hand (lest he should get away) she thrusts her right hand into the
very bottom of his pannier to search for it--For what?--you'll not know the
sooner, quoth Slawkenbergius, for interrupting me--

'I have nothing, good Lady, but empty bottles;' says the asse.

'I'm loaded with tripes;' says the second.

--And thou art little better, quoth she to the third; for nothing is there
in thy panniers but trunk-hose and pantofles--and so to the fourth and
fifth, going on one by one through the whole string, till coming to the
asse which carries it, she turns the pannier upside down, looks at it--
considers it--samples it--measures it--stretches it--wets it--dries it--
then takes her teeth both to the warp and weft of it.

--Of what? for the love of Christ!

I am determined, answered Slawkenbergius, that all the powers upon earth
shall never wring that secret from my breast.



Chapter 4.LXXXI.

We live in a world beset on all sides with mysteries and riddles--and so
'tis no matter--else it seems strange, that Nature, who makes every thing
so well to answer its destination, and seldom or never errs, unless for
pastime, in giving such forms and aptitudes to whatever passes through her
hands, that whether she designs for the plough, the caravan, the cart--or
whatever other creature she models, be it but an asse's foal, you are sure
to have the thing you wanted; and yet at the same time should so eternally
bungle it as she does, in making so simple a thing as a married man.

Whether it is in the choice of the clay--or that it is frequently spoiled
in the baking; by an excess of which a husband may turn out too crusty (you
know) on one hand--or not enough so, through defect of heat, on the other--
or whether this great Artificer is not so attentive to the little Platonic
exigences of that part of the species, for whose use she is fabricating
this--or that her Ladyship sometimes scarce knows what sort of a husband
will do--I know not: we will discourse about it after supper.

It is enough, that neither the observation itself, or the reasoning upon
it, are at all to the purpose--but rather against it; since with regard to
my uncle Toby's fitness for the marriage state, nothing was ever better:
she had formed him of the best and kindliest clay--had temper'd it with her
own milk, and breathed into it the sweetest spirit--she had made him all
gentle, generous, and humane--she had filled his heart with trust and
confidence, and disposed every passage which led to it, for the
communication of the tenderest offices--she had moreover considered the
other causes for which matrimony was ordained--

And accordingly. . ..

The Donation was not defeated by my uncle Toby's wound.

Now this last article was somewhat apocryphal; and the Devil, who is the
great disturber of our faiths in this world, had raised scruples in Mrs.
Wadman's brain about it; and like a true devil as he was, had done his own
work at the same time, by turning my uncle Toby's Virtue thereupon into
nothing but empty bottles, tripes, trunk-hose, and pantofles.



Chapter 4.LXXXII.

Mrs. Bridget had pawn'd all the little stock of honour a poor chamber-maid
was worth in the world, that she would get to the bottom of the affair in
ten days; and it was built upon one of the most concessible postulata in
nature: namely, that whilst my uncle Toby was making love to her mistress,
the corporal could find nothing better to do, than make love to her--'And
I'll let him as much as he will, said Bridget, to get it out of him.'

Friendship has two garments; an outer and an under one. Bridget was
serving her mistress's interests in the one--and doing the thing which most
pleased herself in the other: so had as many stakes depending upon my
uncle Toby's wound, as the Devil himself--Mrs. Wadman had but one--and as
it possibly might be her last (without discouraging Mrs. Bridget, or
discrediting her talents) was determined to play her cards herself.

She wanted not encouragement: a child might have look'd into his hand--
there was such a plainness and simplicity in his playing out what trumps he
had--with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the ten-ace--and so naked and
defenceless did he sit upon the same sopha with widow Wadman, that a
generous heart would have wept to have won the game of him.

Let us drop the metaphor.



Chapter 4.LXXXIII.

--And the story too--if you please: for though I have all along been
hastening towards this part of it, with so much earnest desire, as well
knowing it to be the choicest morsel of what I had to offer to the world,
yet now that I am got to it, any one is welcome to take my pen, and go on
with the story for me that will--I see the difficulties of the descriptions
I'm going to give--and feel my want of powers.

It is one comfort at least to me, that I lost some fourscore ounces of
blood this week in a most uncritical fever which attacked me at the
beginning of this chapter; so that I have still some hopes remaining, it
may be more in the serous or globular parts of the blood, than in the
subtile aura of the brain--be it which it will--an Invocation can do no
hurt--and I leave the affair entirely to the invoked, to inspire or to
inject me according as he sees good.

The Invocation.

Gentle Spirit of sweetest humour, who erst did sit upon the easy pen of my
beloved Cervantes; Thou who glidedst daily through his lattice, and
turned'st the twilight of his prison into noon-day brightness by thy
presence--tinged'st his little urn of water with heaven-sent nectar, and
all the time he wrote of Sancho and his master, didst cast thy mystic
mantle o'er his wither'd stump (He lost his hand at the battle of
Lepanto.), and wide extended it to all the evils of his life--

--Turn in hither, I beseech thee!--behold these breeches!--they are all I
have in world--that piteous rent was given them at Lyons--

My shirts! see what a deadly schism has happen'd amongst 'em--for the laps
are in Lombardy, and the rest of 'em here--I never had but six, and a
cunning gypsey of a laundress at Milan cut me off the fore-laps of five--To
do her justice, she did it with some consideration--for I was returning out
of Italy.

And yet, notwithstanding all this, and a pistol tinder-box which was
moreover filch'd from me at Sienna, and twice that I pay'd five Pauls for
two hard eggs, once at Raddicoffini, and a second time at Capua--I do not
think a journey through France and Italy, provided a man keeps his temper
all the way, so bad a thing as some people would make you believe: there
must be ups and downs, or how the duce should we get into vallies where
Nature spreads so many tables of entertainment.--'Tis nonsense to imagine
they will lend you their voitures to be shaken to pieces for nothing; and
unless you pay twelve sous for greasing your wheels, how should the poor
peasant get butter to his bread?--We really expect too much--and for the
livre or two above par for your suppers and bed--at the most they are but
one shilling and ninepence halfpenny--who would embroil their philosophy
for it? for heaven's and for your own sake, pay it--pay it with both hands
open, rather than leave Disappointment sitting drooping upon the eye of
your fair Hostess and her Damsels in the gate-way, at your departure--and
besides, my dear Sir, you get a sisterly kiss of each of 'em worth a pound-
-at least I did--

--For my uncle Toby's amours running all the way in my head, they had the
same effect upon me as if they had been my own--I was in the most perfect
state of bounty and good-will; and felt the kindliest harmony vibrating
within me, with every oscillation of the chaise alike; so that whether the
roads were rough or smooth, it made no difference; every thing I saw or had
to do with, touch'd upon some secret spring either of sentiment or rapture.

--They were the sweetest notes I ever heard; and I instantly let down the
fore-glass to hear them more distinctly--'Tis Maria; said the postillion,
observing I was listening--Poor Maria, continued he (leaning his body on
one side to let me see her, for he was in a line betwixt us), is sitting
upon a bank playing her vespers upon her pipe, with her little goat beside
her.

The young fellow utter'd this with an accent and a look so perfectly in
tune to a feeling heart, that I instantly made a vow, I would give him a
four-and-twenty sous piece, when I got to Moulins--

--And who is poor Maria? said I.

The love and piety of all the villages around us; said the postillion--it
is but three years ago, that the sun did not shine upon so fair, so quick-
witted and amiable a maid; and better fate did Maria deserve, than to have
her Banns forbid, by the intrigues of the curate of the parish who
published them--

He was going on, when Maria, who had made a short pause, put the pipe to
her mouth, and began the air again--they were the same notes;--yet were ten
times sweeter: It is the evening service to the Virgin, said the young
man--but who has taught her to play it--or how she came by her pipe, no one
knows; we think that heaven has assisted her in both; for ever since she
has been unsettled in her mind, it seems her only consolation--she has
never once had the pipe out of her hand, but plays that service upon it
almost night and day.

The postillion delivered this with so much discretion and natural
eloquence, that I could not help decyphering something in his face above
his condition, and should have sifted out his history, had not poor Maria
taken such full possession of me.

We had got up by this time almost to the bank where Maria was sitting: she
was in a thin white jacket, with her hair, all but two tresses, drawn up
into a silk-net, with a few olive leaves twisted a little fantastically on
one side--she was beautiful; and if ever I felt the full force of an honest
heart-ache, it was the moment I saw her--

--God help her! poor damsel! above a hundred masses, said the postillion,
have been said in the several parish churches and convents around, for
her,--but without effect; we have still hopes, as she is sensible for short
intervals, that the Virgin at last will restore her to herself; but her
parents, who know her best, are hopeless upon that score, and think her
senses are lost for ever.

As the postillion spoke this, Maria made a cadence so melancholy, so tender
and querulous, that I sprung out of the chaise to help her, and found
myself sitting betwixt her and her goat before I relapsed from my
enthusiasm.

Maria look'd wistfully for some time at me, and then at her goat--and then
at me--and then at her goat again, and so on, alternately--

--Well, Maria, said I softly--What resemblance do you find?

I do entreat the candid reader to believe me, that it was from the humblest
conviction of what a Beast man is,--that I asked the question; and that I
would not have let fallen an unseasonable pleasantry in the venerable
presence of Misery, to be entitled to all the wit that ever Rabelais
scatter'd--and yet I own my heart smote me, and that I so smarted at the
very idea of it, that I swore I would set up for Wisdom, and utter grave
sentences the rest of my days--and never--never attempt again to commit
mirth with man, woman, or child, the longest day I had to live.

As for writing nonsense to them--I believe there was a reserve--but that I
leave to the world.

Adieu, Maria!--adieu, poor hapless damsel!--some time, but not now, I may
hear thy sorrows from thy own lips--but I was deceived; for that moment she
took her pipe and told me such a tale of woe with it, that I rose up, and
with broken and irregular steps walk'd softly to my chaise.

--What an excellent inn at Moulins!



Chapter 4.LXXXIV.

When we have got to the end of this chapter (but not before) we must all
turn back to the two blank chapters, on the account of which my honour has
lain bleeding this half hour--I stop it, by pulling off one of my yellow
slippers and throwing it with all my violence to the opposite side of my
room, with a declaration at the heel of it--

--That whatever resemblance it may bear to half the chapters which are
written in the world, or for aught I know may be now writing in it--that it
was as casual as the foam of Zeuxis his horse; besides, I look upon a
chapter which has only nothing in it, with respect; and considering what
worse things there are in the world--That it is no way a proper subject for
satire--

--Why then was it left so? And here without staying for my reply, shall I
be called as many blockheads, numsculs, doddypoles, dunderheads, ninny-
hammers, goosecaps, joltheads, nincompoops, and sh..t-a-beds--and other
unsavoury appellations, as ever the cake-bakers of Lerne cast in the teeth
of King Garangantan's shepherds--And I'll let them do it, as Bridget said,
as much as they please; for how was it possible they should foresee the
necessity I was under of writing the 84th chapter of my book, before the
77th, &c?

--So I don't take it amiss--All I wish is, that it may be a lesson to the
world, 'to let people tell their stories their own way.'



The Seventy-seventh Chapter.

As Mrs. Bridget opened the door before the corporal had well given the rap,
the interval betwixt that and my uncle Toby's introduction into the
parlour, was so short, that Mrs. Wadman had but just time to get from
behind the curtain--lay a Bible upon the table, and advance a step or two
towards the door to receive him.

My uncle Toby saluted Mrs. Wadman, after the manner in which women were
saluted by men in the year of our Lord God one thousand seven hundred and
thirteen--then facing about, he march'd up abreast with her to the sopha,
and in three plain words--though not before he was sat down--nor after he
was sat down--but as he was sitting down, told her, 'he was in love'--so
that my uncle Toby strained himself more in the declaration than he needed.

Mrs. Wadman naturally looked down, upon a slit she had been darning up in
her apron, in expectation every moment, that my uncle Toby would go on; but
having no talents for amplification, and Love moreover of all others being
a subject of which he was the least a master--When he had told Mrs. Wadman
once that he loved her, he let it alone, and left the matter to work after
its own way.

My father was always in raptures with this system of my uncle Toby's, as he
falsely called it, and would often say, that could his brother Toby to his
processe have added but a pipe of tobacco--he had wherewithal to have found
his way, if there was faith in a Spanish proverb, towards the hearts of
half the women upon the globe.

My uncle Toby never understood what my father meant; nor will I presume to
extract more from it, than a condemnation of an error which the bulk of the
world lie under--but the French, every one of 'em to a man, who believe in
it, almost as much as the Real Presence, 'That talking of love, is making
it.'

--I would as soon set about making a black-pudding by the same receipt.

Let us go on: Mrs. Wadman sat in expectation my uncle Toby would do so, to
almost the first pulsation of that minute, wherein silence on one side or
the other, generally becomes indecent: so edging herself a little more
towards him, and raising up her eyes, sub blushing, as she did it--she took
up the gauntlet--or the discourse (if you like it better) and communed with
my uncle Toby, thus:

The cares and disquietudes of the marriage state, quoth Mrs. Wadman, are
very great. I suppose so--said my uncle Toby: and therefore when a
person, continued Mrs. Wadman, is so much at his ease as you are--so happy,
captain Shandy, in yourself, your friends and your amusements--I wonder,
what reasons can incline you to the state--

--They are written, quoth my uncle Toby, in the Common-Prayer Book.

Thus far my uncle Toby went on warily, and kept within his depth, leaving
Mrs. Wadman to sail upon the gulph as she pleased.

--As for children--said Mrs. Wadman--though a principal end perhaps of the
institution, and the natural wish, I suppose, of every parent--yet do not
we all find, they are certain sorrows, and very uncertain comforts? and
what is there, dear sir, to pay one for the heart-achs--what compensation
for the many tender and disquieting apprehensions of a suffering and
defenceless mother who brings them into life? I declare, said my uncle
Toby, smit with pity, I know of none; unless it be the pleasure which it
has pleased God--

A fiddlestick! quoth she.



Chapter 4.the Seventy-eighth.

Now there are such an infinitude of notes, tunes, cants, chants, airs,
looks, and accents with which the word fiddlestick may be pronounced in all
such causes as this, every one of 'em impressing a sense and meaning as
different from the other, as dirt from cleanliness--That Casuists (for it
is an affair of conscience on that score) reckon up no less than fourteen
thousand in which you may do either right or wrong.

Mrs. Wadman hit upon the fiddlestick, which summoned up all my uncle Toby's
modest blood into his cheeks--so feeling within himself that he had somehow
or other got beyond his depth, he stopt short; and without entering further
either into the pains or pleasures of matrimony, he laid his hand upon his
heart, and made an offer to take them as they were, and share them along
with her.

When my uncle Toby had said this, he did not care to say it again; so
casting his eye upon the Bible which Mrs. Wadman had laid upon the table,
he took it up; and popping, dear soul! upon a passage in it, of all others
the most interesting to him--which was the siege of Jericho--he set himself
to read it over--leaving his proposal of marriage, as he had done his
declaration of love, to work with her after its own way. Now it wrought
neither as an astringent or a loosener; nor like opium, or bark, or
mercury, or buckthorn, or any one drug which nature had bestowed upon the
world--in short, it work'd not at all in her; and the cause of that was,
that there was something working there before--Babbler that I am! I have
anticipated what it was a dozen times; but there is fire still in the
subject--allons.



Chapter 4.LXXXV.

It is natural for a perfect stranger who is going from London to Edinburgh,
to enquire before he sets out, how many miles to York; which is about the
half way--nor does any body wonder, if he goes on and asks about the
corporation, &c. . ..

It was just as natural for Mrs. Wadman, whose first husband was all his
time afflicted with a Sciatica, to wish to know how far from the hip to the
groin; and how far she was likely to suffer more or less in her feelings,
in the one case than in the other.

She had accordingly read Drake's anatomy from one end to the other. She
had peeped into Wharton upon the brain, and borrowed Graaf (This must be a
mistake in Mr. Shandy; for Graaf wrote upon the pancreatick juice, and the
parts of generation.) upon the bones and muscles; but could make nothing of
it.

She had reason'd likewise from her own powers--laid down theorems--drawn
consequences, and come to no conclusion.

To clear up all, she had twice asked Doctor Slop, 'if poor captain Shandy
was ever likely to recover of his wound--?'

--He is recovered, Doctor Slop would say--

What! quite?

Quite: madam--

But what do you mean by a recovery? Mrs. Wadman would say.

Doctor Slop was the worst man alive at definitions; and so Mrs. Wadman
could get no knowledge: in short, there was no way to extract it, but from
my uncle Toby himself.

There is an accent of humanity in an enquiry of this kind which lulls
Suspicion to rest--and I am half persuaded the serpent got pretty near it,
in his discourse with Eve; for the propensity in the sex to be deceived
could not be so great, that she should have boldness to hold chat with the
devil, without it--But there is an accent of humanity--how shall I describe
it?--'tis an accent which covers the part with a garment, and gives the
enquirer a right to be as particular with it, as your body-surgeon.

'--Was it without remission?--

'--Was it more tolerable in bed?

'--Could he lie on both sides alike with it?

'--Was he able to mount a horse?

'--Was motion bad for it?' et caetera, were so tenderly spoke to, and so
directed towards my uncle Toby's heart, that every item of them sunk ten
times deeper into it than the evils themselves--but when Mrs. Wadman went
round about by Namur to get at my uncle Toby's groin; and engaged him to
attack the point of the advanced counterscarp, and pele mele with the Dutch
to take the counterguard of St. Roch sword in hand--and then with tender
notes playing upon his ear, led him all bleeding by the hand out of the
trench, wiping her eye, as he was carried to his tent--Heaven! Earth! Sea!-
-all was lifted up--the springs of nature rose above their levels--an angel
of mercy sat besides him on the sopha--his heart glow'd with fire--and had
he been worth a thousand, he had lost every heart of them to Mrs. Wadman.

--And whereabouts, dear sir, quoth Mrs. Wadman, a little categorically, did
you receive this sad blow?--In asking this question, Mrs. Wadman gave a
slight glance towards the waistband of my uncle Toby's red plush breeches,
expecting naturally, as the shortest reply to it, that my uncle Toby would
lay his fore-finger upon the place--It fell out otherwise--for my uncle
Toby having got his wound before the gate of St. Nicolas, in one of the
traverses of the trench opposite to the salient angle of the demibastion of
St. Roch; he could at any time stick a pin upon the identical spot of
ground where he was standing when the stone struck him: this struck
instantly upon my uncle Toby's sensorium--and with it, struck his large map
of the town and citadel of Namur and its environs, which he had purchased
and pasted down upon a board, by the corporal's aid, during his long
illness--it had lain with other military lumber in the garret ever since,
and accordingly the corporal was detached to the garret to fetch it.

My uncle Toby measured off thirty toises, with Mrs. Wadman's scissars, from
the returning angle before the gate of St. Nicolas; and with such a virgin
modesty laid her finger upon the place, that the goddess of Decency, if
then in being--if not, 'twas her shade--shook her head, and with a finger
wavering across her eyes--forbid her to explain the mistake.

Unhappy Mrs. Wadman!

--For nothing can make this chapter go off with spirit but an apostrophe to
thee--but my heart tells me, that in such a crisis an apostrophe is but an
insult in disguise, and ere I would offer one to a woman in distress--let
the chapter go to the devil; provided any damn'd critic in keeping will be
but at the trouble to take it with him.



Chapter 4.LXXXVI.

My uncle Toby's Map is carried down into the kitchen.



Chapter 4.LXXXVII.

--And here is the Maes--and this is the Sambre; said the corporal, pointing
with his right hand extended a little towards the map, and his left upon
Mrs. Bridget's shoulder--but not the shoulder next him--and this, said he,
is the town of Namur--and this the citadel--and there lay the French--and
here lay his honour and myself--and in this cursed trench, Mrs. Bridget,
quoth the corporal, taking her by the hand, did he receive the wound which
crush'd him so miserably here.--In pronouncing which, he slightly press'd
the back of her hand towards the part he felt for--and let it fall.

We thought, Mr. Trim, it had been more in the middle,--said Mrs. Bridget--

That would have undone us for ever--said the corporal.

--And left my poor mistress undone too, said Bridget.

The corporal made no reply to the repartee, but by giving Mrs. Bridget a
kiss.

Come--come--said Bridget--holding the palm of her left hand parallel to the
plane of the horizon, and sliding the fingers of the other over it, in a
way which could not have been done, had there been the least wart or
protruberance--'Tis every syllable of it false, cried the corporal, before
she had half finished the sentence--

--I know it to be fact, said Bridget, from credible witnesses.

--Upon my honour, said the corporal, laying his hand upon his heart, and
blushing, as he spoke, with honest resentment--'tis a story, Mrs. Bridget,
as false as hell--Not, said Bridget, interrupting him, that either I or my
mistress care a halfpenny about it, whether 'tis so or no--only that when
one is married, one would chuse to have such a thing by one at least--

It was somewhat unfortunate for Mrs. Bridget, that she had begun the attack
with her manual exercise; for the corporal instantly. . ..



Chapter 4.LXXXVIII.

It was like the momentary contest in the moist eye-lids of an April
morning, 'Whether Bridget should laugh or cry.'

She snatch'd up a rolling-pin--'twas ten to one, she had laugh'd--

She laid it down--she cried; and had one single tear of 'em but tasted of
bitterness, full sorrowful would the corporal's heart have been that he had
used the argument; but the corporal understood the sex, a quart major to a
terce at least, better than my uncle Toby, and accordingly he assailed Mrs.
Bridget after this manner.

I know, Mrs. Bridget, said the corporal, giving her a most respectful kiss,
that thou art good and modest by nature, and art withal so generous a girl
in thyself, that, if I know thee rightly, thou would'st not wound an
insect, much less the honour of so gallant and worthy a soul as my master,
wast thou sure to be made a countess of--but thou hast been set on, and
deluded, dear Bridget, as is often a woman's case, 'to please others more
than themselves--'

Bridget's eyes poured down at the sensations the corporal excited.

--Tell me--tell me, then, my dear Bridget, continued the corporal, taking
hold of her hand, which hung down dead by her side,--and giving a second
kiss--whose suspicion has misled thee?

Bridget sobb'd a sob or two--then open'd her eyes--the corporal wiped 'em
with the bottom of her apron--she then open'd her heart and told him all.



Chapter 4.LXXXIX.

My uncle Toby and the corporal had gone on separately with their operations
the greatest part of the campaign, and as effectually cut off from all
communication of what either the one or the other had been doing, as if
they had been separated from each other by the Maes or the Sambre.

My uncle Toby, on his side, had presented himself every afternoon in his
red and silver, and blue and gold alternately, and sustained an infinity of
attacks in them, without knowing them to be attacks--and so had nothing to
communicate--

The corporal, on his side, in taking Bridget, by it had gain'd considerable
advantages--and consequently had much to communicate--but what were the
advantages--as well as what was the manner by which he had seiz'd them,
required so nice an historian, that the corporal durst not venture upon it;
and as sensible as he was of glory, would rather have been contented to
have gone bareheaded and without laurels for ever, than torture his
master's modesty for a single moment--

--Best of honest and gallant servants!--But I have apostrophiz'd thee,
Trim! once before--and could I apotheosize thee also (that is to say) with
good company--I would do it without ceremony in the very next page.



Chapter 4.XC.

Now my uncle Toby had one evening laid down his pipe upon the table, and
was counting over to himself upon his finger ends (beginning at his thumb)
all Mrs. Wadman's perfections one by one; and happening two or three times
together, either by omitting some, or counting others twice over, to puzzle
himself sadly before he could get beyond his middle finger--Prithee, Trim!
said he, taking up his pipe again,--bring me a pen and ink: Trim brought
paper also.

Take a full sheet--Trim! said my uncle Toby, making a sign with his pipe at
the same time to take a chair and sit down close by him at the table. The
corporal obeyed--placed the paper directly before him--took a pen, and
dipp'd it in the ink.

--She has a thousand virtues, Trim! said my uncle Toby--

Am I to set them down, an' please your honour? quoth the corporal.

--But they must be taken in their ranks, replied my uncle Toby; for of them
all, Trim, that which wins me most, and which is a security for all the
rest, is the compassionate turn and singular humanity of her character--I
protest, added my uncle Toby, looking up, as he protested it, towards the
top of the ceiling--That was I her brother, Trim, a thousand fold, she
could not make more constant or more tender enquiries after my sufferings--
though now no more.

The corporal made no reply to my uncle Toby's protestation, but by a short
cough--he dipp'd the pen a second time into the inkhorn; and my uncle Toby,
pointing with the end of his pipe as close to the top of the sheet at the
left hand corner of it, as he could get it--the corporal wrote down the
word
HUMANITY. . .thus.

Prithee, corporal, said my uncle Toby, as soon as Trim had done it--how
often does Mrs. Bridget enquire after the wound on the cap of thy knee,
which thou received'st at the battle of Landen?

She never, an' please your honour, enquires after it at all.

That, corporal, said my uncle Toby, with all the triumph the goodness of
his nature would permit--That shews the difference in the character of the
mistress and maid--had the fortune of war allotted the same mischance to
me, Mrs. Wadman would have enquired into every circumstance relating to it
a hundred times--She would have enquired, an' please your honour, ten times
as often about your honour's groin--The pain, Trim, is equally
excruciating,--and Compassion has as much to do with the one as the other--

--God bless your honour! cried the corporal--what has a woman's compassion
to do with a wound upon the cap of a man's knee? had your honour's been
shot into ten thousand splinters at the affair of Landen, Mrs. Wadman would
have troubled her head as little about it as Bridget; because, added the
corporal, lowering his voice, and speaking very distinctly, as he assigned
his reason--

'The knee is such a distance from the main body--whereas the groin, your
honour knows, is upon the very curtain of the place.'

My uncle Toby gave a long whistle--but in a note which could scarce be
heard across the table.

The corporal had advanced too far to retire--in three words he told the
rest--

My uncle Toby laid down his pipe as gently upon the fender, as if it had
been spun from the unravellings of a spider's web--

--Let us go to my brother Shandy's, said he.



Chapter 4.XCI.

There will be just time, whilst my uncle Toby and Trim are walking to my
father's, to inform you that Mrs. Wadman had, some moons before this, made
a confident of my mother; and that Mrs. Bridget, who had the burden of her
own, as well as her mistress's secret to carry, had got happily delivered
of both to Susannah behind the garden-wall.

As for my mother, she saw nothing at all in it, to make the least bustle
about--but Susannah was sufficient by herself for all the ends and purposes
you could possibly have, in exporting a family secret; for she instantly
imparted it by signs to Jonathan--and Jonathan by tokens to the cook as she
was basting a loin of mutton; the cook sold it with some kitchen-fat to the
postillion for a groat, who truck'd it with the dairy maid for something of
about the same value--and though whisper'd in the hay-loft, Fame caught the
notes with her brazen trumpet, and sounded them upon the house-top--In a
word, not an old woman in the village or five miles round, who did not
understand the difficulties of my uncle Toby's siege, and what were the
secret articles which had delayed the surrender.--

My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis,
by which means never man crucified Truth at the rate he did--had but just
heard of the report as my uncle Toby set out; and catching fire suddenly at
the trespass done his brother by it, was demonstrating to Yorick,
notwithstanding my mother was sitting by--not only, 'That the devil was in
women, and that the whole of the affair was lust;' but that every evil and
disorder in the world, of what kind or nature soever, from the first fall
of Adam, down to my uncle Toby's (inclusive), was owing one way or other to
the same unruly appetite.

Yorick was just bringing my father's hypothesis to some temper, when my
uncle Toby entering the room with marks of infinite benevolence and
forgiveness in his looks, my father's eloquence re-kindled against the
passion--and as he was not very nice in the choice of his words when he was
wroth--as soon as my uncle Toby was seated by the fire, and had filled his
pipe, my father broke out in this manner.



Chapter 4.XCII.

--That provision should be made for continuing the race of so great, so
exalted and godlike a Being as man--I am far from denying--but philosophy
speaks freely of every thing; and therefore I still think and do maintain
it to be a pity, that it should be done by means of a passion which bends
down the faculties, and turns all the wisdom, contemplations, and
operations of the soul backwards--a passion, my dear, continued my father,
addressing himself to my mother, which couples and equals wise men with
fools, and makes us come out of our caverns and hiding-places more like
satyrs and four-footed beasts than men.

I know it will be said, continued my father (availing himself of the
Prolepsis), that in itself, and simply taken--like hunger, or thirst, or
sleep--'tis an affair neither good or bad--or shameful or otherwise.--Why
then did the delicacy of Diogenes and Plato so recalcitrate against it? and
wherefore, when we go about to make and plant a man, do we put out the
candle? and for what reason is it, that all the parts thereof--the
congredients--the preparations--the instruments, and whatever serves
thereto, are so held as to be conveyed to a cleanly mind by no language,
translation, or periphrasis whatever?

--The act of killing and destroying a man, continued my father, raising his
voice--and turning to my uncle Toby--you see, is glorious--and the weapons
by which we do it are honourable--We march with them upon our shoulders--We
strut with them by our sides--We gild them--We carve them--We in-lay them--
We enrich them--Nay, if it be but a scoundrel cannon, we cast an ornament
upon the breach of it.--

--My uncle Toby laid down his pipe to intercede for a better epithet--and
Yorick was rising up to batter the whole hypothesis to pieces--

--When Obadiah broke into the middle of the room with a complaint, which
cried out for an immediate hearing.

The case was this:

My father, whether by ancient custom of the manor, or as impropriator of
the great tythes, was obliged to keep a Bull for the service of the Parish,
and Obadiah had led his cow upon a pop-visit to him one day or other the
preceding summer--I say, one day or other--because as chance would have it,
it was the day on which he was married to my father's house-maid--so one
was a reckoning to the other. Therefore when Obadiah's wife was brought to
bed--Obadiah thanked God--

--Now, said Obadiah, I shall have a calf: so Obadiah went daily to visit
his cow.

She'll calve on Monday--on Tuesday--on Wednesday at the farthest--

The cow did not calve--no--she'll not calve till next week--the cow put it
off terribly--till at the end of the sixth week Obadiah's suspicions (like
a good man's) fell upon the Bull.

Now the parish being very large, my father's Bull, to speak the truth of
him, was no way equal to the department; he had, however, got himself,
somehow or other, thrust into employment--and as he went through the
business with a grave face, my father had a high opinion of him.

--Most of the townsmen, an' please your worship, quoth Obadiah, believe
that 'tis all the Bull's fault--

--But may not a cow be barren? replied my father, turning to Doctor Slop.

It never happens: said Dr. Slop, but the man's wife may have come before
her time naturally enough--Prithee has the child hair upon his head?--added
Dr. Slop--

--It is as hairy as I am; said Obadiah.--Obadiah had not been shaved for
three weeks--Wheu. . .u. . .u. . .cried my father; beginning the sentence
with an exclamatory whistle--and so, brother Toby, this poor Bull of mine,
who is as good a Bull as ever p..ss'd, and might have done for Europa
herself in purer times--had he but two legs less, might have been driven
into Doctors Commons and lost his character--which to a Town Bull, brother
Toby, is the very same thing as his life--

L..d! said my mother, what is all this story about?--

A Cock and a Bull, said Yorick--And one of the best of its kind, I ever
heard.


End of the Fourth Volume.







 


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