 CHAPTER 34-39 With two strokes, the one at Hippocrates, the other at Lord Verulom, did my father achieve it. The stroke at the Prince of Physicians, with which he began, was no more than a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint of the arse longa and wheat of Brevis, life short, cried my father, and the art of healing tedious. And who are we to thank for both the one and the other, but the ignorance of quacks themselves, and the stage-loads of chemical nostrums, and peripatetic lumber, with which in all ages they have first flattered the world, and at last deceived it. Oh my Lord Verulom, cried my father, turning from Hippocrates and making his second stroke at him, as the principal of nostrum-mongers, and the fittest to be made an example of to the rest. What shall I say to thee, my great Lord Verulom? What shall I say to thy internal spirit, thy opium, thy salt-peter, thy greasy unctions, thy daily purges, thy nightly clisters, and succodoniums? My father was never at a loss what to say to any man upon any subject, and had the least occasion for the exordium of any man breathing, how he dealt with his lordship's opinion, you shall see. But when, I know not, we must first see what his lordship's opinion was. Chapter 35 The two great causes which conspire with each other to shorten life, says Lord Verulom. Our first, the internal spirit, which like a gentle flame, wastes the body down to death, and secondly, the external air that parches the body up to ashes, which two enemies attacking us on both sides of our bodies together, at length destroy our organs and render them unfit to carry on the functions of life. This being the state of the case, the road to longevity was plain. Nothing more being required, says his lordship, but to repair the waste committed by the internal spirit, by making the substance of it more thick and dense, by a regular course of opiates on one side, and by refrigerating the heat of it on the other, by three grains and a half of salt peter every morning before you got up. Still this frame of ours was left exposed to the inimical assaults of the air without, but this was fenced off again by a course of greasy unctions, which so fully saturated the pores of the skin, that no spicula could enter nor could anyone get out. This put a stop to all perspiration, sensible and insensible, which being the cause of so many scurvy distempers, a course of clisters was requisite to carry off redundant humours and render the system complete. What my father had to say to my lord of varulums opiates, his salt peter and greasy unctions and clisters you shall read, but not today or tomorrow. Time presses upon me, my reader is impatient. I must get forwards. You shall read the chapter at your leisure, if you choose it, as soon as ever the Tristropedia is published. Suffice it at present to say, my father leveled the hypothesis with the ground. And in doing that, the learned it no, he built up and established his own. CHAPTER XXXVI The whole secret of health, said my father, beginning the sentence again, depending evidently upon the due contention betwixt the radical heat and radical moisture within us. The least imaginable skill had been sufficient to have maintained it, had not the schoolmen confounded the task. Merely as Van Helmont the famous chemist has proved, by all along mistaking the radical moisture for the tallow and fat of animal bodies. Now the radical moisture is not the tallow or fat of animals, but an oily and balsamous substance. For the fat and tallow, as also the phlegm or watery parts, are cold, whereas the oily and balsamous parts are of a lively heat and spirit, which accounts for the observation of Aristotle, quote Omni-animal post-coietum estrusting. Now it is certain that the radical heat lives in the radical moisture. But whether vice versa is a doubt. However, when the one decays, the other decays also, and then is produced either an unnatural heat, which causes an unnatural dryness, or an unnatural moisture, which causes dropsies, so that of a child as he grows up can but be taught to avoid running into fire or water, as either of them threaten his destruction, which will be all that is needful to be done upon that head. CHAPTER 37 The description of the Siege of Jericho itself could not have engaged the attention of my uncle Toby more powerfully than the last chapter. His eyes were fixed upon my father throughout it. He never mentioned radical heat and radical moisture, but my uncle Toby took his pipe out of his mouth and shook his head. And as soon as the chapter was finished, he beckoned to the corporal to come close to his chair to ask him the following question, aside, it was at the Siege of Limerick and Pleasure Honor replied the corporal, making a bow. The poor fellow and I, both my uncle Toby, addressing himself to my father, were scarce able to crawl out of our tents at the time the Siege of Limerick was raised. Upon the very account you mention, now what can have got into that precious noddle of thine? My dear brother Toby cried my father mentally. By heaven continued he, communing still with himself, it would puzzle an Oedipus to bring it in point. I believe in Pleasure Honor, quote the corporal, that if it had not been for the quantity of brandy we set fire to every night and the claret and cinnamon, with which I applied your honor off, and the Geneva trim, added my uncle Toby, which did us more good than all. I verily believe, continued the corporal, we had both and Pleasure Honor left our lives in the trenches and been buried in them, too. The noblest grave corporal, cried my uncle Toby, his eyes sparkling as he spoke, that a soldier could wish to lie down in, but a pitiful death for him and Pleasure Honor, replied the corporal. All this was as much Arabic to my father as the rites of colqui and troglodytes had been before to my uncle Toby. My father could not determine whether he was to frown or to smile. My uncle Toby, turning to Yorick, resumed the case at Limerick, more intelligibly than he had begun it, and so settled the point for my father at Wants. CHAPTER 38 It was undoubtedly, said my uncle Toby, a great happiness for myself and the corporal, that we had all along a burning fever, attended with a most raging thirst, during the whole five and twenty days the flux was upon us in the camp. Otherwise what my brother calls the radical moisture must, as I conceive it, inevitably have got the better. My father drew in his lungs, top full of air, and, looking up, blew it forth again, as slowly as he possibly could. It was heaven's mercy to us, continued my uncle Toby, which put it into the corporal's head, to maintain that due contention detwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture, by reinforcing the fever, as he did all along, with hot wine and spices, whereby the corporal kept up, as it were, a continual firing, so that the radical heat stood its ground from the beginning to the end, and was a fair match for the moisture, terrible as it was. Upon my honour, added my uncle Toby, you might have heard the contention within our bodies, brother Shandy, twenty toise, if there was no firing, said Yorick. Well said my father, with a full aspiration, and pausing a while after the word. Was I a judge, and the laws of the country which made me one permitted it, I would condemn some of the worst malefactors, provided they had had their clergy. Yorick, foreseeing the sentence, was likely to end with no sort of mercy, laid his hand upon my father's breast, and begged he would respite it for a few minutes, till he asked the corporal a question. Prithee Trim, said Yorick, without staying for my father's leave, tell us honestly, what is thy opinion concerning this self-same radical heat and radical moisture? With humble submission to his honour's better judgment, quote the corporal, making a bow to my uncle Toby. Speak thy opinion freely, corporal, said my uncle Toby. The poor fellow is my servant, not my slave, added my uncle Toby, turning to my father. The corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick hanging upon the wrist of it, by a black bong split into a tassel about the knot, he marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism, then touching his underjaw, with the thumb and fingers of his right hand, before he opened his mouth, he delivered his notion. Thus Chapter 39, just as the corporal was humming to begin, in waddled Dr. Slopp, it is not Tuppence matter. The corporal shall go on in the next chapter. Let who will come in? Well my good doctor cried my father sportively, for the transitions of his passions were unaccountably sudden. And what has this wealth of mine to say to the matter? Had my father been asking after the amputation of the tail of a puppy-dog, he could not have done it, in a more careless error. The system which Dr. Slopp had laid down to treat the accident by, no way allowed of such a mode of inquiry, he sat down. Praise, sir, clothed my uncle Toby, in a manner which could not go unanswered. In what condition is the boy? Twill end in a pymosis, replied Dr. Slopp. I am no wiser than I was, clothed my uncle Toby, returning his pipe into his mouth. Then let the corporal go on, said my father, with his medical lecture. The corporal made a bow to his old friend Dr. Slopp, and then delivered his opinion concerning radical heat and radical moisture. In the following words. CHAPTER 40 The city of Limerick, the siege of which was begun under his Majesty King William himself, the year after I went into the army, lies in pleasure honors, in the middle of a devilish, wet, swampy country. "'Tis quite surrounded,' said my uncle Toby, with the Shannon, and is by its situation, one of the strongest fortified places in Ireland. I think this is a new-fashioned quote, Dr. Slopp, of beginning a medical lecture. "'Tis all true,' answered Trim. "'Then I wish the faculty would follow the cut of it,' said Yorick. "'Tis all cut through, and please your reverence,' said the corporal. With drains and bogs, and besides, there was such a quantity of rain fell during the siege. The whole country was like a puddle, towards that and nothing else, which brought on the flux, and which had liked to have killed both his honor and myself. Now there was no such thing after the first ten days continued the corporal, for a soldier to lie dry in his tent, without cutting a ditch round it, to draw off the water. Nor was that enough, for those who could afford it as his honor could, without setting fire every night to a pewter dish full of brandy, which took off the damp of the air, and made the inside of the tent as warm as a stove. And what conclusion dost thou draw, corporal Trim? cried my father, from all these premises. "'I infer, and please your worship,' replied Trim, that the radical moisture is nothing in the world but ditch water, and that the radical heat of those who can go to the expense of it is burnt brandy. The radical heat and moisture of a private man, and please your honor, is nothing but ditch water, and a dram of Geneva, and give us but enough of it, with a pipe of tobacco, to give us spirits, and drive away the vapors. We know not what it is to fear death. "'I am at a loss, Captain Shandy,' quoth Dr. Slopp, to determine in which branch of learning your servant shines most. Whether in physiology or divinity, Slopp had not forgot Trim's comment upon the sermon. "'It is but an hour ago,' replied Yorick, since the corporal was examined in the latter, and passed muster with great honor. "'The radical heat and moisture,' quoth Dr. Slopp, turning to my father, you must know, is the basis and foundation of our being, as the root of a tree is the source and principle of its vegetation. It is inherent in the seeds of all animals, and may be preserved sundry ways, but principally, in my opinion, by consubstantials, imprimands, and occludents. Now this poor fellow continued Dr. Slopp, pointing to the corporal, has had the misfortune to have heard some superficial empiric discourse upon this nice point. "'That he has,' said my father. "'Very likely,' said my uncle. "'I'm sure of it,' quoth Yorick. "'Dr. Slopp, being called out to look at a cataplasm,' he had ordered. It gave my father an opportunity of going on with another chapter in the Tristrophedia. "'Come, cheer up, my lads. I'll show you land, for when we have tugged through that chapter, the book shall not be opened again. "'This twelve-month. Huzzah!' Chapter 42. Five years with a bib under his chin. Four years in traveling from Christ Cross Road to Malachi. A year and a half in learning to write his own name. Seven long years and more. Tuptowing it at Greek and Latin. Four years at his probations and his negations. The fine statue still lying in the middle of the marble block. And nothing done, but his tools sharpened to hew it out. His apitious delay was not the great Julius Gallagher. Within an ace of never getting his tools sharpened at all, forty-four years old was he before he could manage his Greek. And Peter Damianus, Lord Bishop of Ostia, as all the world knows, could not so much as read when he was of man's estate, and Baldus himself, as eminent as he turned out after, entered upon the law, so late in life, that everybody imagined he intended to be an advocate in the other world. No wonder, when Eudomatus, the son of Archidamus, heard synocrates at seventy-five disputing about wisdom, that he asked gravely, if the old man be yet disputing and inquiring concerning wisdom, what time will he have to make use of it? Yorick listened to my father with great attention. There was a seasoning of wisdom unaccountably mixed up with his strangest whims, and he had sometimes such illuminations in the darkest of his eclipses as almost atoned for them. Be wary, sir, when you imitate him. I am convinced, Yorick, continued my father, half-reading and half-discoursing, that there is a north-west passage to the intellectual world, and that the soul of man has shorter ways of going to work, in furnishing itself with knowledge and instruction than we generally take with it. But alack, all fields have not a river or a spring running besides them. Every child, Yorick, has not apparent to point it out. The whole entirely depends, added my father in a low voice. Upon the auxiliary verbs, Mr. Yorick, had Yorick trod upon Virgil's snake, he could not have looked more surprised. I am surprised, too, cried my father, observing it, and I reckon it as one of the greatest calamities which ever befell the Republic of Letters, that those who have been entrusted with the education of our children and whose business it was to open their minds and stock them early with ideas in order to set the imagination loose upon them, have made so little use of the auxiliary verbs in doing it, as they have done, so that except Raymond Luleas and the elder Pellegrini, the last of which arrived to such perfection in the use of them with his topics, that in a few lessons he could teach a young gentleman to discourse with plausibility upon any subject, pro and con, and to say and write all that could be spoken or written concerning it without blotting a word to the admiration of all who beheld him, I should be glad, said Yorick, interrupting my father. To be made to comprehend this matter, you shall, said my father. The highest stretch of improvement a single word is capable of is a high metaphor, for which, in my opinion, the idea is generally the worse, and not the better, but be that as it may, when the mind has done that with it. There is an end, the mind and the idea are at rest, until a second idea enters, and so on. Now the use of the auxiliaries is at once to set the soul a-going by herself upon the materials as they are brought her, and by the versability of this great engine, round which they are twisted, to open new tracts of inquiry, and make every idea engender millions. You excite my curiosity greatly, said Yorick. For my own part, quote my Uncle Toby, I have given it up. The Danes and Pleasure Honour, quote the Corporal, who were on the left at the Siege of Limerick, were all auxiliaries, and very good ones, said my Uncle Toby. But the auxiliaries, Trim, my brother is talking about, I conceive, to be different things. You do, said my father, rising up. Chapter 43. My father took a single turn across the room, then sat down and finished the chapter. The verb's auxiliary, we are concerned in here, continued my father. Our am, was, have, had, do, did, make, made, suffer, shall, should, will, would, can, could, owe, ought, used, or is want. And these varied with tenses present, past, and future, and conjugated with the verb see, or with these questions added to them. Is it, was it, will it be, would it be, may it be, might it be? And these again put negatively. Is it not, was it not, but it not, or affirmatively, it is, it was, it ought to be, or chronologically, has it been always, lately, how long ago, or hypothetically, if it was, if it was not, what would follow, if the French should beat the English, if the Sun should go out of the Zodiac. Now, by the right use and application of these, continued my father, in which a child's memory should be exercised, there is no one idea can enter his brain, how barren so ever, but a magazine of conceptions and conclusions may be drawn forth from it. Didst thou ever see a white bear? cried my father, turning his head round to Trim, who stood at the back of his chair. No, in pleaser honor, replied the corporal. But thou couldst discourse about one Trim, said my father, in case of need, how is it possible, brother, quote my Uncle Toby, if the corporal never saw one? It is the fact I want, replied my father, and the possibility of it is as follows. A white bear. Very well, have I ever seen one? Might I ever have seen one? Am I ever to see one? Aught I ever to have seen one? Or can I ever see one? Would I have seen a white bear? Or how can I imagine it? If I should see a white bear, what should I say? If I should never see a white bear, what then? If I never have, can, must, or shall see a white bear alive, have I ever seen the skin of one? Did I ever see one painted? Described, have I never dreamed of one? Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers, or sisters ever see a white bear? What would they give? How would they behave? How would the white bear have behaved? Is he wild, tame, terrible, rough, smooth? Is the white bear worth seeing? Is there no sin in it? Is it better than a black one? CHAPTER 44 Will not stop two moments, my dear sir. Only as we have got through these five volumes. In the first edition the sixth volume began with this chapter. Do, sir, sit down upon a set. They are better than nothing. Let us just look back upon the country we have passed through. What a wilderness has it been, and what a mercy that we have not both of us been lost or devoured by wild beasts in it. Did you think the world itself, sir, had contained such a number of jackasses? How they viewed and reviewed us as we passed over the rivulet at the bottom of that little valley. And when we climbed over that hill, and were just getting out of sight, good God, what a braying did they all set up together. Prithee, shepherd, who keeps all those jackasses? Heaven be their comforter. What, are they never curried? Are they never taken in in winter? Bray, bray, bray. Bray on. The world is deeply your debtor. Louder still. That's nothing. In good soothe. You are ill-used. Was I a jackass, I solemnly declare I would bray in G. So ray oh, from morning, even unto night. CHAPTER 45 When my father had danced his white bear backwards and forwards through half a dozen pages, he closed the book for good and all, and in a kind of triumph redelivered it into Trim's hand, with a nod to lay it upon the squirtoir, where he found it. Tristram said he, shall be made to conjugate every word in the dictionary, backwards and forwards the same way. Every word, Yorick, by this means, you see, is converted into a thesis or an hypothesis. Every thesis and hypothesis have an offspring of propositions, and each proposition has its own consequences and conclusions, every one of which leads the mind on again into fresh tracks of enquiries and doubtings. The force of this engine, added my father, is incredible in opening a child's head. "'Tis enough, brother Shandy,' cried my uncle Toby, to burst it into a thousand splinters. "'I presume,' said Yorick, smiling, it must be owing to this. For let logicians say what they will. It is not to be accounted for sufficiently, from the bare use of the ten predicaments, that the famous Vincent Quarino, amongst the many other astonishing feats of his childhood, of which the cardinal Bembo has given the world so exact a story, should be able to paste up in the public schools at Rome, so early as in the eighth year of his age, no less than 4,550 different theses upon the most abstruse points of the most abstruse theology, and to defend and maintain them in such sort as to cramp and dumbfound his opponents. "'What is that?' cried my father, to what is told us of Alphonsus Tostatus, who almost in his nurse's arms learned all the sciences and liberal arts, without being taught any one of them. "'What shall we say of the great Pierschius?' "'That's the very man,' cried my uncle Toby. "'I once told you a brother Shandy, who walked a matter of 500 miles, reckoning from Paris to Sheveling, and from Sheveling back again merely to see Stavinas flying chariot. He was a very great man,' added my uncle Toby. "'Meaning Stavinas. He was so, brother Toby,' said my father, meaning Pierschius, and had multiplied his ideas so fast and increased his knowledge to such a prodigious stock, that if we may give credit to an anecdote concerning him, which we cannot withhold here, without shaking the authority of all anecdotes whatever. At seven years of age his father committed entirely to his care. The education of his younger brother, a boy of five years old, with the sole management of all his concerns, was the father as wise as the son, quote my uncle Toby. "'I should think not,' said Yorick. "'But what are these,' continued my father, breaking out in a kind of enthusiasm? What are these to those prodigies of childhood ingrotius, Skiopius, Hinesius, Polition, Pascal, Joseph Scaliger, Ferdinand de Cordeux, and others, some of which left off their substantial forms at nine years old or sooner, and went on reasoning without them. Others went through their classics at seven, wrote tragedies at eight. Ferdinand de Cordeux was so wise at nine, twas thought the devil was in him, and at Venice gave such proofs of his knowledge and goodness that the monks imagined he was anti-Christ, or nothing. Others were masters of fourteen languages at ten, finished the course of their rhetoric, poetry, logic, and ethics at eleven, put forth their commentaries upon Servius and Martianus Cappella at twelve, and at thirteen received their degrees in philosophy, laws, and divinity, but you forget the great Lipsius, quote Yorick, who composed a work. "'Nous aurion quel qu'inter est,' says Bayet, de montrer qu'il n'a rien de ridicule, s'il est toi véritable, au moins dans le sens enigmatique qu'Nicius Erythrius attaché de lui donnait. Cet autor dit que, pour comprendre comme Lips, il a pu composer un ouvrage le premier jour de sa vie. Il faut s'imaginer que ce premier jour n'est pas celui de sa naissance Chanel, mais celui auquel il a commencé, d'user de la raison. Il veut que cet été à l'âge de neuf ans. Et-il nous veut persuader que ce coup de cet âge que Lips fit un poème. Le tour est en génieux, etc., etc. The day he was born, they should have wiped it up, said my Uncle Toby, and said no more about it. Chapter 46. When the cataplasm was ready, a struple of decorum had un seasonably rose up in Susanna's conscience about holding the candle whilst Slopp tied it on. Slopp had not treated Susanna's distemper with anodines, and so a quarrel had ensued betwixt them. Oh, oh, said Slopp, casting a glance of undue freedom in Susanna's face as she declined the office. Then I think I know you, madam. You know me, sir," cried Susanna fastidiously, and with a toss of her head, leveled evidently not at his profession, but at the doctor himself. You know me," cried Susanna again. Dr. Slopp clapped his finger and his thumb instantly upon his nostrils. Susanna's spleen was ready to burst at it. Tis false, said Susanna. Come, come, Mrs. Modesty, said Slopp, not a little elated with the success of his last thrust. If you won't hold the candle and look, you may hold it and shut your eyes. That's one of your popish shifts, cried Susanna. Tis better said Slopp with anod than no shift at all, young woman. I defy you, sir, cried Susanna, pulling her shift sleeve below her elbow. It was almost impossible for two persons to assist each other in a surgical case. With a more splinetic cordiality, Slopp snatched up the catapalsm, Susanna snatched up the candle. A little this way, said Slopp, Susanna looking one way and rowing another, instantly set fire to Slopp's wig, which being somewhat bushy and unctuous with all, was burnt out before it was well kindled. You impudent whore, cried Slopp, for what is passion but a wild beast. You impudent whore, cried Slopp, getting upright with the catapalsm in his hand. I never was the destruction of anybody's nose, said Susanna, which is more than you can say. Is it, cried Slopp, throwing the catapalsm in her face? Yes it is, cried Susanna, returning the compliment with what was left in the pan. Chapter 47 Dr. Slopp and Susanna filed cross-bills against each other in the parlor, which done as the catapalsm had failed, they retired into the kitchen to prepare a fomentation for me, and whilst that was doing, my father determined to the point, as you will read. Chapter 48 You seat his high time, said my father, addressing himself equally to my Uncle Toby and Yorick, to take this young creature out of these women's hands, and put him into those of a private governor. Marcus Antoninus provided fourteen governors all at once to superintend his son, Commodus, education, and in six weeks he cashiered five of them. I know very well, continued my father, that Commodus' mother was in love with a gladiator at the time of her conception, which accounts for a great many of Commodus' cruelties when he became emperor, but still I am of opinion that those five whom Antoninus dismissed did Commodus temper in that short time more hurt than the other nine were able to rectify all their lives long. Now I consider the person who is to be about my son as the mirror in which he is to view himself from morning to night, by which he is to adjust his looks, his carriage, and perhaps the inmost sentiments of his heart. I would have one Yorick if possible, polished at all points, fit for my child to look into. This is very good sense, quote my Uncle Toby to himself. There is, continued my father, a certain mean and motion of the body and all its parts, both in acting and speaking, which argues a man well within, and I am not at all surprised that Gregory of Naziansum, upon observing the hasty and untoward gestures of Julian, should foretell he would one day become an apostate, or that St. Ambrose should turn his Aminoensis out of doors because of an indecent motion of his head, which went backwards and forwards like a flail, or that Democritus should conceive Protagoras to be a scholar from seeing him bind up a faggot, and thrusting as he did it, the small twigs inwards. There are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued my father, which let a penetrating eye at once into a man's soul, and I maintain it, added he, that a man of sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room, or take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which discovers him. It is for these reasons, continued my father, that the governor I make choice of shall neither veed Pellegrina, lisp, or squint, or wink, or talk loud, or look fierce, or foolish, or bite his lips, or grind his teeth, or speak through his nose, or picket, or blow it with his fingers. He shall neither walk fast, or slow, or fold his arms, for that is laziness, or hang them down, for that is folly, or hide them in his pocket, for that is nonsense. He shall neither strike, or pinch, or tickle, or bite, or cut his nails, or hawk, or spit, or sniffed, or drum with his feet, or fingers in company, nor, according to Erasmus, shall he speak to anyone in making water, nor shall he point to carrion, or excrement. Now this is all nonsense again, quote my Uncle Toby, to himself. I will have him, continued my father, cheerful, facete, jovial, at the same time, prudent, attentive to business, vigilant, acute, argued, inventive, quick in resolving doubts and speculative questions. He shall be wise and judicious and learned, and why not humble and moderate, and gentle tempered and good, said Yorick. And why not, cried my Uncle Toby, free and generous and bountiful and brave. He shall, my dear Toby, replied my father, getting up and shaking him by his hand. Then Brother Shandy answered my Uncle Toby, raising himself off the chair, and laying down his pipe to take hold of my father's other hand. I humbly beg, I may recommend, poor Lafever's son to you, a tear of joy of the first water, sparkled in my Uncle Toby's eye, and another, the fellow to it, in the corporals, as the proposition was made. You will see why, when you read Lafever's story, who that I was, nor can I recollect, nor perhaps you, without turning back to the place, what it was that hindered me from letting the corporal tell it in his own words. But the occasion is lost. I must tell it now in my own. The Life and Opinions of Tristum Shandy Gentlemen Volume 3 By Lawrence Stern CHAPTER 49 The Story of Lafever It was some time in the summer of that year in which Dundermond was taken by the Allies, which was about seven years before my father came into the country, and about as many, after the time, that my Uncle Toby and Trim had privately decamped from my father's house in town, in order to lay some of the finest sieges to some of the finest fortified cities in Europe. When my Uncle Toby was one evening getting his supper, with Trim sitting behind him at a small sideboard, I say, sitting, for in consideration of the corporal's lame knee, which sometimes gave him exquisite pain, when my Uncle Toby dined or subbed alone, he would never suffer the corporal to stand. And the poor fellow's veneration for his master was such that, with a proper artillery, my Uncle Toby could have taken Dundermond itself with less trouble than he was able to gain this point over him. For many a time when my Uncle Toby supposed the corporal's leg was at rest, he would look back and detect him standing behind him with the most dutiful respect. This bread more little squabbles betwixt them than all other causes for five and twenty years together. But this is neither here nor there. Why do I mention it? Ask my pen. It governs me. I govern not it. He was one evening sitting thus at his supper, when the landlord of a little inn in the village came into the parlor with an empty file in his hand to beg a glass or two of sack. "'Tis for a poor gentleman, I think, of the army,' said the landlord, who has been taken ill at my house four days ago and has never held up his head since, or had a desire to taste anything till just now that he has a fancy for a glass of sack and a thin toast. I think,' says he, taking his hand from his forehead, it would comfort me. "'If I could neither beg, borrow, or buy such a thing,' added the landlord, I would almost steal it for the poor gentleman. He is so ill. I hope in God he will soon mend,' continued he. "'We are all of us concerned for him.' "'Thou art a good-natured soul. I will answer for thee,' cried my Uncle Toby, and thou shalt drink the poor gentleman's health in a glass of sack thyself, and take a couple of bottles with my service, and tell him he is heartily welcome to them, and to a dozen more if they will do him good. "'Though I am persuaded,' said my Uncle Toby, as the landlord shut the door, he is a very compassionate fellow, Trim, yet I can't help entertaining a high opinion of his guest, too. There must be something more than common in him that in so short a time should win so much upon the affections of his host. And of his whole family,' added the corporal, for they are all concerned for him. "'Step after him,' said my Uncle Toby. Do, Trim, and ask if he knows his name.' "'I have quite forgot it, truly,' said the landlord, coming back into the parlour with the corporal. But I can ask his son again.' "'He has a son with him, then,' said my Uncle Toby.' "'A boy,' replied the landlord, of about eleven or twelve years of age. But the poor creature has tasted almost as little as his father. He does nothing but mourn and lament for him, night and day. He has not stirred from the bedside these two days. My Uncle Toby laid down his knife and fork, and thrust his plate from before him, as the landlord gave him the account. And Trim, without being ordered, took away without saying one word, and in a few minutes brought him his pipe and tobacco. "'Stay in the room a little,' said my Uncle Toby. "'Trim,' said my Uncle Toby, after he lighted his pipe and smoked about a dozen whiffs. Trim came in front of his master and made his bow. My Uncle Toby smoked on and said no more. "'Corporeal,' said my Uncle Toby, the corporal made his bow. My Uncle Toby proceeded no further, but finished his pipe. "'Trim,' said my Uncle Toby. "'I have a project in my head, as it is a bad night, of wrapping myself up warm in my roculeur and paying a visit to this poor gentleman. "'Your honor's roculeur,' replied the corporal, has not once been head-on since the night before your honor received your wound, when we mounted guard in the trenches before the gate of St. Nicholas. And besides, it is so cold and rainy a night, that what with the roculeur and what with the weather, which will be enough to give your honor your death and bring on your honor's torment in your groin.' "'I fear so,' replied my Uncle Toby. "'But I am not at rest in my mind, Trim, since the account the landlord has given me. "'I wish I had not known so much of this affair,' added my Uncle Toby, or that I had known more of it. How shall we manage it? "'Leave it, and please your honor to me,' quote the corporal. "'I'll take my hat and stick and go to the house and reconnoitre and act accordingly, and I will bring your honor a full account in an hour.' "'Thou shalt go, Trim,' said my Uncle Toby, and here's a shilling for thee to drink with his servant. "'I shall get it all out of him,' said the corporal, shutting the door.' My Uncle Toby filled his second pipe, and had it not been that he now and then wandered from the point, with considering whether it was not full as well to have the curtain of the to-nail a straight line as a crooked one, he might be said to have thought of nothing else but poor Lafever and his boy the whole time he smoked it. Chapter 50 The Story of Lafever Continued It was not till my Uncle Toby had knocked the ashes out of his third pipe that Corporal Trim returned from the inn and gave him the following account. "'I despair'd at first,' said the corporal, of being able to bring back your honor any kind of intelligence concerning the poor sick lieutenant. "'Is he in the army then?' said my Uncle Toby. "'He is,' said the corporal. "'And in what regiment?' said my Uncle Toby. "'I'll tell your honor,' replied the corporal. "'Everything straightforward's, as I learnt it. "'Then, Trim, I'll fill another pipe,' said my Uncle Toby, "'and not interrupt thee till thou has done. So sit down at thy ease, Trim, in the window seat, and begin thy story again.' The corporal made his old bow, which generally spoke as plain as a bow could speak. Your honor is good, and having done that he sat down as he was ordered, and began the story to my Uncle Toby over again, in pretty near the same words. "'I despair'd at first,' said the corporal, of being able to bring back any intelligence to your honor about the lieutenant and his son. For when I asked where his servant was, from whom I made myself sure of knowing everything which was proper to be asked, that's a right distinction, Trim,' said my Uncle Toby. I was answered, and please, your honor, that he had no servant with him, that he had come to the inn with hired horses, which, upon finding himself unable to proceed, to join, I suppose, the regiment, he had dismissed the morning after he came. "'If I get better,' my dear,' said he, as he gave his purse to his son to pay the man, "'we can hire horses from hence. But alas, the poor gentleman will never get from hence,' said the landlady to me, for I heard the death watch all night long, and when he dies, the youth, his son, will certainly die with him, for he is broken-hearted already.' I was hearing this account, continued the corporal, when the youth came into the kitchen, to order the thin toast the landlord spoke of. But I will do it for my father myself,' said the youth. "'Pray, let me save you the trouble, young gentleman,' said I, taking up a fork for the purpose, and offering him my chair to sit down upon by the fire, whilst I did it. "'I believe, sir,' said he, very modestly, I can please him best myself. "'I am sure,' said I, his honour will not like the toast the worse for being toasted by an old soldier. The youth took hold of my hand and instantly burst into tears. "'Poor youth,' said my Uncle Toby. He has been bred up from an infant in the army, and the name of a soldier, Trim, sounded in his ears like the name of a friend. I wish I had him here.' "'I never, in the longest march,' said the corporal, had so great a mind to my dinner as I had to cry with him for company. "'What could be the matter with me, and please your honour? Nothing in the world, Trim,' said my Uncle Toby, blowing his nose, but that thou art a good-natured fellow.' "'When I gave him the toast,' continued the corporal, I thought it was proper to tell him I was Captain Shandy's servant, and that your honour, though a stranger, was extremely concerned for his father, and that if there was anything in your house or cellar, and thou mightest have added my purse too,' said my Uncle Toby. He was heartily welcome to it. He made a very low bow, which was meant to your honour, but no answer, for his heart was full, so he went upstairs with the toast. "'I warn't you, my dear,' said I, as I open the kitchen door, your father will be well again. Mr. York's curret was smoking a pipe by the kitchen fire, but said not a word good or bad to comfort the youth. I thought it wrong,' added the corporal. "'I think so too,' said my Uncle Toby. When the Lieutenant had taken his glass of sack and toast, he felt himself a little revived, and sent down to the kitchen, to let me know, that in about ten minutes he should be glad, if I would step upstairs. I believe,' said the landlord, he is going to say his prayers, for there was a book laid upon the chair by his bedside, and as I shut the door I saw his son take up a cushion. "'I thought,' said the curret, that your gentleman of the army, Mr. Trim, never said your prayers at all. I heard the poor gentleman say his prayers last night, said the landlady, very devoutly, and with my own ears, or I could not have believed it. "'Are you sure of it?' replied the curret. "'A soldier, and please your reverence,' said I, praises often of his own accord as a person. And when he is fighting for his king, and for his own life, and for his honor too, he has the most reason to pray to God of any one in the whole world. "'Twas well said of thee, Trim,' said my Uncle Toby. "'But when a soldier,' said I, and please your reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together in the trenches, up to his knees in cold water, or engaged,' said I, for months together in long and dangerous marches, harassed, perhaps, in his rear to-day, harassing others to-morrow, detached here, countermanded there, resting this night out upon his arms, beat up in his shirt the next, but numbered in his joints, perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on, must say his prayers how and when he can. "'I believe,' said I, for I was peaked,' quote the corporal, for the reputation of the army. "'I believe, and please your reverence,' said I, that when a soldier gets time to pray, he prays as heartily as a person, though not with all his fuss and hypocrisy. "'Thou shalt not have said that, Trim,' said my Uncle Toby, for God only knows who is a hypocrite and who is not, at the great and general review of us all, corporal, at the day of judgment, and not till then. It will be seen who has done their duties in this world, and who has not, and we shall be advanced to Trim accordingly.' "'I hope we shall,' said Trim. "'It is in the scripture,' said my Uncle Toby, and I will show it thee to-morrow. "'In the meantime we may depend upon it, Trim, for our comfort,' said my Uncle Toby, that God Almighty is so good and just a governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in it, it will never be inquired into, whether we have done them in a red coat or a black one. "'I hope not,' said the corporal. "'But go on, Trim,' said my Uncle Toby, with thy story. "'When I went up,' continued the corporal, into the lieutenant's room, which I did not do till the expiration of the ten minutes, he was lying in his bed with his head raised upon his hand, with his elbow on the pillow, and a clean white cambered handkerchief besides it. The youth was just swooping down to take up the cushion, upon which I supposed he had been kneeling. The book was laid upon the bed, and, as he rose, in taking up the cushion with one hand, he reached out his other to take it away at the same time. "'Let it remain there, my dear,' said the lieutenant. He did not offer to speak to me till I had walked up close to his bedside. "'If you are Captain Shandy's servant,' said he, "'you must present my thanks to your master, with my little boy's thanks along with them, for his courtesy to me. "'If he was of leavens,' said the lieutenant. I told him your honour was. Then,' said he, I served three campaigns with him in Flanders, and I remember him, but his most likely, as I had not the honour of any acquaintance with him, that he knows nothing of me. You will tell him, however, that the person his good nature has laid under obligation to him, is one Le Fever, a lieutenant of Angus's. But he knows me not,' said he, a second time, musing. "'Possibly he may my story,' added he. Pray tell the Captain. I was the ensign at Breida, whose wife was most unfortunately killed with a musket-shot, as she lay in my arms in my tent. I remember the story, and please your honour,' said I, very well. "'Do you so?' said he, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief. Then well may I.' In saying this he drew a little ring out of his bosom, which seemed tied with a black ribbon around his neck, and kissed it twice. "'Here, Billy,' said he. The boy flew across the room to the bedside, and falling down upon his knee, took the ring in his hand and kissed it too. Then kissed his father and sat down upon the bed and wept. "'I wish,' said my Uncle Toby, with a deep sigh. I wish, Trim, I was asleep.' "'Your honour,' replied the corporal, is too much concerned. "'Shall I pour your honour out a glass of sac to your pipe?' "'Do, Trim,' said my Uncle Toby. "'I remember,' said my Uncle Toby, sighing again. The story of the ensign and his wife, with the circumstance his modesty omitted, and particularly well that he, as well as she, upon some account or other, I forget what, was universally pity by the whole regiment, but finished the story without art upon. "'Tis finished already,' said the corporal, for I could stay no longer. So wished his honour a good night. Young the fever rose from off the bed, and saw me to the bottom of the stairs. And as we went down together, told me, they had come from Ireland and were on their route to join the regiment in Flanders. But alas!' said the corporal. The lieutenant's last day's march is over. "'Then what is to become of the poor boy?' cried my Uncle Toby.' End of Chapter 50 The Life and Opinions of Tristum Shandy Gentlemen Volume 3 by Lawrence Stern Chapter 51 The Story of La Fever Continued It was to my Uncle Toby's eternal honour, though I tell it only for the sake of those who, when cooped in betwixt a natural and a positive law, know not for their souls, which way the world to turn themselves, that notwithstanding my Uncle Toby was warmly engaged at that time in carrying on the siege of Denderman, parallel with the allies, who pressed theirs on so vigorously that they scarce allowed him time to get his dinner, that nevertheless he gave up Denderman, though he had already made a lodgement upon the counterscarp, and bent his whole thoughts toward the private distresses at the end, and accept that he ordered the garden gate to be bolted up, by which he might be said to have turned the siege of Denderman into a blockade, he left Denderman to itself, to be relieved or not by the French king, as the French king thought good, and only considered how he himself should relieve the poor lieutenant and his son. That kind being, who is a friend to the friendless, shall recompense thee for this. Thou hast left this matter short, said my Uncle Toby to the corporal, as he was putting him to bed, and I will tell thee in what trim, in the first place, when thou madest an offer of my services to La Fever, as sickness and travelling are both expensive, and thou knowest he was but a poor lieutenant, with a son to subsist as well as himself out of his pay, that thou didst not make an offer to him of my purse, because, had he stood in need, thou knowest trim, he had been as welcome to it as myself. Your honour knows, said the corporal, I had no orders. True, quote my Uncle Toby, thou didst very bright trim as a soldier, but certainly very wrong as a man. In the second place, for which, indeed, thou hast the same excuse, continued my Uncle Toby, when thou offeredst him whatever was in my house, thou shouldst have offered him my house too. A sick brother officer should have the best quarters trim, and if we had him with us, we could tend and look to him. Thou art an excellent nurse thyself trim, and what with thy care of him, and the old women's and his boys, and mine together, we might recruit him once again, and set him upon his legs. In a fortnight or three weeks, added my Uncle Toby, smiling, he might march. He will never march, and please your honour, in this world, said the corporal. He will march, said my Uncle Toby, rising up from the side of the bed with one shoe off, and please your honour, said the corporal, he will never march but to his grave. He shall march, cried my Uncle Toby, marching the foot he had the shoe on, though without advancing an inch. He shall march to his regiment. He cannot stand it, said the corporal. He shall be supported, said my Uncle Toby. He'll drop at last, said the corporal, and what will become of his boy. He shall not drop, said my Uncle Toby firmly. A well o' day. Do what we can for him, said trim, maintaining his point. The poor soul will die. He shall not die by g, cried my Uncle Toby. The accusing spirit, which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in, and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever. Chapter 52 My Uncle Toby went to his bureau, put his purse into his breeches' pocket, and, having ordered the corporal to go early in the morning for a physician, he went to bed and fell asleep. Chapter 53 The story of Lafever continued. The sun looked bright the morning after, to every eye in the village but Lafever's, and his afflicted sons. The hand of death pressed heavy upon his eyelids, and hardly could the wheel at the cistern turn round at circle. When my Uncle Toby, who had rose up an hour before his wanted time, entered the lieutenant's room, and, without preface or apology, set himself down upon the chair by the bedside, and, independently of all modes and customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old friend and brother officer would have done it, and asked him how he did, how he had rested in the night, what was his complaint, where was his pain, and what he could do to help him. And, without giving him time to answer any one of the inquiries, went on, and told him of the little plan which he had been concerting with the corporal the night before, for him. You shall go home directly, Lafever, said my Uncle Toby, to my house, and will send for a doctor to see what's the matter, and will have an apothecary, and the corporal shall be your nurse, and I'll be your servant, Lafever. There was a frankness in my Uncle Toby, not the effect of familiarity, but the cause of it, which let you at once into his soul, and showed you the goodness of his nature. To this there was something in his looks, and voice, and manner, super-added, which eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him, so that before my Uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his child, and was pulling it towards him. The blood and spirits of Lafever, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart, rallied back. The film foresoaked his eyes for a moment, and he looked up wishfully into my Uncle Toby's face, then cast a look upon his boy, and that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken. Nature instantly ebbed again, the film returned to its place, the pulse fluttered, stopped, went on, throbbed, stopped again, moved, stopped. Shall I go on? No. Chapter 54. I am so impatient to return to my own story that what remains of young Lafever's, that is, from this turn of his fortune to the time my Uncle Toby recommended him for my preceptor, shall be told in a very few words in the next chapter. All that is necessary to be added to this chapter is as follows. That my Uncle Toby, with young Lafever in his hand, attended the poor lieutenant as chief mourners to his grave. That the governor of Denderman paid his obsequies all military honors, and that Yorick, not to be behind hand, paid him all ecclesiastic, for he buried him in his chancel. And it appears likewise he preached a funeral sermon over him. I say it appears, for it was Yorick's custom, which I suppose a general one with those of his profession, on the first leaf of every sermon which he composed, to chronicle down the time, the place, and the occasion of its being preached. To this he was ever want to add some short comment or a stricture upon the sermon itself, seldom, indeed, much to its credit. For instance, this sermon upon the Jewish dispensation. I don't like it at all, though I own there is a world of waterlandish knowledge in it, but it's all tritical and most tritically put together. This is but a flimsy kind of a composition. What was in my head when I made it? NB. The excellency of this text is that it will suit any sermon and of this sermon that it will suit any text. For this sermon I shall be hanged, for I've stolen the greatest part of it. Dr. Padagunis found me out, set a thief to catch a thief. On the back of half a dozen I find written, so-so, and no more, and on a couple, moderator, by which, as far as one may gather from Altieri's Italian dictionary, but mostly, frankly, from the authority of a piece of green whip-cord, which seemed to have been the unraveling of York's whiplash, with which he has left us the two sermons marked moderator and the half-dozen of so-so, tied fast together in one bundle by themselves, one may safely suppose he meant pretty near the same thing. There is but one difficulty in the way of this conjecture, which is this, that the moderatoes are five times better than the so-soes, show ten times more knowledge of the human heart, have seventy times more wit and spirit in them, and, to rise popularly in my climax, discovered a thousand times more genius, and to crown all, are infinitely more entertaining than those tied up with them, for which reason, when Erich York's dramatic sermons are offered to the world, though I shall admit but one out of the whole number of the so-soes, I shall nevertheless adventure to print the two moderatoes without any sort of scruple. What lore it could mean by the words lentimente, tenute, grave, and sometimes adagio, as applied to theological compositions, and with which he has characterized some of these sermons, I dare not venture to guess. I am more puzzled still upon finding la octava alta upon one, constrapito upon the back of another, siciliana upon a third, a la capella upon a fourth, con la arco upon this, senzala arco upon that. All I know is that they are musical terms and have a meaning, and as he was a musical man, I will make no doubt but that by some quaint application of such metaphors to the compositions in hand, they impressed very distinct ideas of their several characters upon his fancy, whatever they may do upon that of others. Amongst these there is that particular sermon which has unaccountably led me into this digression. The funeral sermon, upon poor La Fever, wrote out very fairly, as if from a hasty copy. I take notice of it the more because it seems to have been his favorite composition. It is upon mortality, and it is tied lengthwise and crosswise with the yarn thrum, and then rolled up and twisted round with a half sheet of dirty blue paper, which seems to have been once the cast cover of a general review, which to this day smells horribly of those horse-drugs. Whether these marks of humiliation were designed, I something doubt, because at the end of the sermon and not at the beginning of it, very different from his way of treating the rest, he had wrote, Bravo, though not very offensively, for it is at two inches at least and a half's distance from and below the concluding line of the sermon. At the very extremity of the page and in that right hand corner of it, which, you know, is generally covered with your thumb, and to do it justice, it is wrote besides with a crow's quill so faintly in a small Italian hand, as scarce to solicit the eye towards the place, whether your thumb is there or not, so that from the manner of it, it stands half excused, and being wrote moreover with very pale ink, diluted almost to nothing, to as more like a retretto of the shadow of Vanity than of Vanity herself, of the two, resembling rather a faint, though of transient applause, secretly stirring up in the heart of the composer, than a gross mark of it, coarsely obtruded upon the world. With all these extenuations, I am aware that in publishing this, I do no service to York's character as a modest man, but all men have their failings, and what lessens this still farther and almost wipes it away is this, that the word was struck through sometime afterwards as appears from a very different tint of the ink, with a line across it in this manner. Bravo! crossed out, as if he had retracted or was ashamed of the opinion he had once entertained of it. These short characters of his sermons were always written, accepting in this one instance, upon the first leaf of his sermon, which served as a cover to it, and usually upon the inside of it, which was turned towards the text. But at the end of his discourse, where perhaps he had five or six pages, and sometimes perhaps a whole score to turn himself in, he took a large circuit, and indeed a much more meddlesome one, as if he had snatched the occasion of unlacing himself with a few more frolicsome strokes at vice, than the straightness of the pulpit aloud. These, though hussar-like, they skirmish lightly and all out of order, are still auxiliaries on the side of virtue. Tell me then, mine hair, Vandir, Blanader Dandir, Gavadin Stronka, why they should not be printed together. End of chapter 54. Chapters 55-59 of Tristram Shandy, volume 3. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentlemen. Volume 3 by Lawrence Stern. Chapter 55. When my Uncle Toby had turned everything into money and settled all accounts betwixt the agent of the regiment and Lafieva, and betwixt Lafieva and all mankind, there remained nothing more in my Uncle Toby's hands than an old regimental coat and a sword, so that my Uncle Toby found little or no opposition from the world in taking administration. The coat my Uncle Toby gave the corporal, wear it, trim, said my Uncle Toby, as long as it will hold together for the sake of the poor lieutenant. And this, said my Uncle Toby, taking up the sword in his hand and drawing it out of the scabbard as he spoke. And this, Lafieva, I'll save for thee. Tis all the fortune, continued my Uncle Toby, hanging it up upon a crook and pointing to it. Tis all the fortune, my dear Lafieva, which God has left thee. But if he has given thee a heart to fight, though I weigh with it in the world, and thou dost it like a man of honour, tis enough for us. As soon as my Uncle Toby had laid a foundation and taught him to inscribe a regular polygon in a circle, he sent him to a public school, where, accepting Witsentide and Christmas, at which times the corporal was punctually dispatched for him, he remained to the spring of the year 17. When the stories of the emperors sending his army into Hungary against the Turks, kindling a spark of fire in his bosom, he left his Greek and Latin without leave. And throwing himself upon his knees before my Uncle Toby, begged his father's sword, and my Uncle Toby's leave along with it, to go and try his fortune under Eugene. Twice did my Uncle Toby forget his wound and cry out, Lafieva, I will go with thee, and thou shalt fight beside me. And twice he lay his hand upon his groin and hung down his head in sorrow and disconciliation. My Uncle Toby took down the sword from the crook where it had hung untouched ever since the lieutenant's death and delivered it to the corporal to brighten him up. And having detained Lafieva a single fortnight to equip him and contract for his passage to Leghorn, he put the sword into his hand. If thou art brave, Lafieva, said my Uncle Toby, this will not fail thee. But Fortune said he, musing a little, Fortune may, and if she does, added my Uncle Toby, embracing him, come back again to me, Lafieva, and we will shape thee another course. The greatest injury could not have oppressed the heart of Lafieva more than my Uncle Toby's paternal kindness. He parted from my Uncle Toby as the best of sons from the best of fathers, both dropped tears. And as my Uncle Toby gave him his last kiss, he slipped 60 guineas tied up in an old purse of his fathers, in which was his mother's ring into his hand, and bid God bless him. Chapter 56. Lafieva got up to the Imperial Army just time enough to try what metal his sword was made of at the defeat of the Turks before Belgrade. But a series of unmerited mischances had pursued him from that moment and trod close upon his heels for four years together after. He had withstood these buffettings to the last, till sickness overtook him at Marsales. From whence he wrote my Uncle Toby word, he had lost his time, his service, his health, and in short, everything but his sword, and was waiting for the first ship to return back to him. As this letter came to hand about six weeks before Susanna's accident, Lafieva was hourly expected, and was uppermost in my Uncle Toby's mind all the time my father was giving him and Yorick a description of what kind of person he would choose for a preceptor to me. But as my Uncle Toby thought my father at first somewhat fanciful in the accomplishments he required, he forbore mentioning Lafieva's name, till the character by Yorick's interposition, ending unexpectedly in one who should be gentle, tempered, and generous, and good, yet impressed the image of Lafieva, and his interest upon my Uncle Toby so forcibly he rose instantly off his chair and laying down his pipe in order to take hold of both my father's hands. "'I beg, brother Shandy,' said my Uncle Toby, "'I may recommend Paul Lafieva's son to you. "'I beseech you do,' added Yorick. "'He has a good heart,' said my Uncle Toby, "'and a brave one too. "'And please, Your Honour,' said the corporal. "'The best heart's trim are ever the bravest,' replied my Uncle Toby. "'And the greatest cowards, and please, Your Honour, "'in our regimen, were the greatest rascals in it. "'There was Sergeant Kumba and Ensign. "'We'll talk about them,' my father said, another time.'" Chapter 57. What a jovial and merry world this would be, may it please your worships, but for that inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief, discontent, melancholy, large jointures, impositions, and lies. Dr. Slopp, like a son of a, as my father called him for it, to exalt himself, debased me to death, and made 10,000 times more of Susanna's accident than there were any grounds for, so that in a week's time or less, it was in everybody's mouth, that poor master Shandy entirely, and fame, who loves to double everything, in three days more, had sworn positively she saw it, and all the world, as usual, gave credit to her evidence, that the nursery window had not only, but that's also, could the world have been sued like a body corporate? My father had brought an action upon the case and trounced it sufficiently, but to fall foul of individuals about it, as every soul who had mentioned the affair did it with the greatest pity imaginable, it was like flying in the very face of his best friends, and yet, to acquiesce under the report, in silence, was to acknowledge it openly, at least in the opinion of one half of the world, and to make a bustle again, in contradicting it, was to confirm it as strongly in the opinion of the other half, was ever poor devil of a country, gentlemen so hampered, said my father, I would show him publicly, said my uncle Toby, at the market cross, to have no effect, said my father. Chapter 58, I'll put him however, into breaches, said my father, let the world say what it will. Chapter 59. There are a thousand resolutions, sir, both in church and state, as well as in matters, madam, of a more private concern, which, though they have carried all the appearance in the world of being taken, and entered upon in a hasty, hair-brained and unadvised manner, were notwithstanding this, and could you or I have got into the cabinet or stood behind the curtain, we should have found it was so. Wade poised and propended, argued upon, canvassed through, entered into, and examined on all sides with so much coolness, that the goddess of coolness herself, I do not take it upon me to prove her existence, could neither have wished it, nor done it better. Of the number of these was my father's resolution of putting me into breaches, which, though determined at once, in a kind of huff and a defiance of all mankind, had, nevertheless, been pro-ed and conned, and judiciously talked over betwixt him and my mother about a month before, in two several beds of justice, which my father held for that purpose. I shall explain the nature of these beds of justice in my next chapter, and in the chapter following that, you shall step with me, madam, behind the curtain, only to hear in what kind of manner my father and my mother debated between themselves, this affair of the breaches, from which you may form an idea how they debated all lesser matters. End of chapters 55 to 59. Chapter 60 to 62 of Justum Chandi Volume 3. This is LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Shalifa Malchem. The Live and Opinions of Justum Chandi, Gentleman, Volume 3 by Lauren Stern. Chapter 60. The ancient gods of Germany, who the learned Cluverias is positive, were first seated in the country between the Vistula and the Odur, and who afterwards incorporated the Herculi, the Bujans, and some other Vandalic clansterum, had all of them a wise custom of debating everything of importance to their state, twice. That is, one's drunk and one's sober. Drunk, that their counters might not want finger, and sober, that they might not want discretion. Now, my father, being an entirely water-drinker, was a long time graveled almost to death in turning this as much to his advantage, as he did every other thing, which the ancients did or said, and it was not till the seventh year of his marriage, after a thousand rudeless experiments and devices, that he hid upon an expedient which answered the purpose. And that was, when any difficult and momentous point was to be settled in the family, which required great variety and great spirit too, in its determination, he fixed and set apart the first Sunday night in the month, and the Saturday night which immediately proceeded it to argue it over in bed with my mother, by which contrivance, if you consider so with yourself, blank, blank, blank. These, my father, humorously enough, called his bets of justice, for from the two different councils taking them these two different humours, a middle one was generally found out which touched the point of wisdom as well, as if you had got drunk and sober a hundred times. It must not be made a secret of, to the world, that this answers full as well illiterate discussions as either in military or conjugal, but it is not every author that can try the experiment as the gods and vandals did it, or if he can, made be always for his body's health, and to do it, as my father did it, am I sure it would be always for his souls? My way is this. In all nice and take-lish discussions of which have no if there are but too many in my book, where I find I cannot take a step without the danger of having either their worships or their reverences upon my back, I write one half full and, rather, fasting, or write it all full and correct it fasting, or write it fasting and correct it full, but they all come to the same thing, so that with a lesser variation from my father's plan than my father's from the Gothic, I feel myself upon a power with him in his first bed of justice, and no way inferior to him in his second. These different and almost irreconcilable effects flow uniformly from the wise and wonderful mechanism of nature, of which be hers the honor. All that we can do is to turn and work the machine to the improvement and to better manufacturing of the art and sciences. Now, when I write full, I write as if I was never to write fasting again as long as I'll live. That is, I write free from the cares as well as a tarot of the world. I count not the number of my scars, nor does my fancy go forth into dark entries and by corners to antidate my stabs. In a word, my pen takes its cause and I write on as much from the fullness of my heart as my stomach. But when, and please your honors, I indict fasting, it is a different history. I paint the world all possible attention and respect and have as great a share whilst it lasts of that understrapping virtue of discretion as a best of you. So, that we twist both, I'll write a careless kind of a civil, nonsensical, good-humored, shandy and book which will do all your hearts good, and all your heads too, provided you understand it. Chapter 61. We should begin, said my father, turning himself half round in bed and shifting his pillow a little towards my mother's as he opened the debate. We should begin to think, Mr. Shandy, of putting this boy into breeches. We should so, said my father. We deferred, my dear, quoth my father, shamefully. I think we do, Mr. Shandy, said my mother. Not about the child looks extremely well, said my father, in his vest and tunics. He does look very well in them, replied my mother, and for that reason it would be almost a sin, added my father, to take him out of him. It would so, said my mother. But indeed, he is growing a very tall lad, rejoined my father. He is very tall for his age indeed, said my mother. I cannot, making two syllables of it, imagine, quoth my father, who did use he takes after? I cannot conceive for my life, said my mother. Hm, said my father. The dialogue ceased for a moment. I am very short myself, continued to my father gravely. You're very short, Mr. Shandy, said my mother. Quoth my father to himself a second time, in muttering which he plucked his pillow a little further from my mother's, and turning about again, there was an end of the debate for three minutes and a half. When he gets these breeches made, cried my father in a higher tone, he looked like a beast in him. He will be very awkward in them at first, replied my mother, and will be lucky if that's the worst on, added my father. It will be very lucky, answered my mother. I suppose, replied my father, making some pause first. He'll be exactly like other people's children. Exactly, said my mother. Though I should be sorry for that, added my father, and so the debate stopped again. There should be of leather, said my father, turning him about again. They will ask him, said my mother, the longest. But he can have no linings to him, replied my father. He cannot, said my mother. To better, to have them of fustion, quoth my father. Nothing can be better, quoth my mother. Except dimmity, replied my father. Disbest of all, replied my mother. One must not give him his death, however, interrupted my father. By no means, said my mother. And so the dialogue stood still again. I am resolved, however, quoth my father, breaking silence at the fourth time. You shall have no pocket-symptom. There is no occasion for any, said my mother. I mean in his coat and waistcoat, replied my father. I mean so too, replied my mother. Though, if he gets a gig or a top, poor souls, it is a ground and a skepticism, they should have where to secure it. Order it as you please, Mr. Shandy, replied my mother. But don't you think it right? Added my father, pressing the point home to her. Perfectly, said my mother, if it pleases you, Mr. Shandy. There so you cried my father, losing temper. Pleases me. You never were distinguished, Mr. Shandy, nor shall I ever teach you to do it betwixt a point of pleasure and a point of convenience. This was on a Sunday night. And further, this chapter saves not. After my father had debated the affair of the breeches with my mother, he consulted Albertus Rubinius upon it, and Albertus Rubinius used my father ten times worse in the consultation, if possible, than even my father had used my mother. For, as Rubinius had wrote a quarto express, d'ere vestiare e vederum, it was Rubinius' business to have given my father some lides. Under contrary, my father might as well have thought of extracting the seven cardinal virtues out of long beard, as of extracting a single word out of Rubinius upon the subject. Upon every other article of ancient dress, Rubinius was very communicative to my father, gave him a full and satisfactory kind of the toga, or loose gown, the clemes, the efet, the tunica, or jacket, the synthesis, the painula, the lacima, with his cuculus, the paludamentum, the praitexta, the sagum, or soldier's jacket, the trabai, of which according to seatonius there were three kinds. But what are all these two, the breeches? said my father. Rubinius threw him down upon the counter all kinds of shoes which had been in fashion with the Romans. There was the open shoe, the closed shoe, the slip shoe, the wooden shoe, the sock, the buskin, and the military shoe with hobnails in it, which juvenile ticks notice of. There were the clocks, the patents, the pantoufles, the brogues, the sandals with latchets to them. There was the felt shoe, the linen shoe, the laced shoe, the braided shoe, the calqueus in cedus, and the calqueus rostratus. Rubinius showed my father how well they all fit it, in what manner they laced on, with what points, straps, thongs, latchets, ribbons, jacks, and ends. But I want to be informed about the breeches, said my father. Albertus Rubinius informed my father that the Romans manufactured stuffs of various fabrics, some plain, some striped, others dipured throughout the whole contexture of the wool, with silk and gold, that linen did not begin to be in common use till towards the declension of the empire, when the Egyptians, coming to settle amongst them, brought it into vogue, that persons of quality and fortune distinguished themselves by the finest and whiteness of their clothes. Which colour, next to purple, which was appropriated to the great offices, they most effected, and wore on their birthdays and public rejoicings, that it appeared from the best historians of those times that they frequently sent their clothes to the fuller, to be cleaned and whitened, but that the inferior people, to avoid to that expense, generally wore brown clothes, and of a something called a texture, till towards the beginning of Augustus's reign, when the slave dressed like his master, and almost every distinction of Hebimon was lost, but the latest clavus. And to what was the latest clavus, said my father. Rubinius told him that a point was still litigating amongst of the learned, that Ignatius, Sigonius, Bosseus, Tichonensis, Bifius, Budeius, Samausius, Lipsius, Ladius, Isaac, Casubon, and Joseph Scaliger all differed from each other, and he from them. That some took it to be the button, some the coat itself, others only the colour of it. That a great Bifius in his wardrobe of the ancients, chapter 12, honestly said he knew not what it was, whether a tabula, a stud, a button, a loop, a buckle, or clasps and keepers. My father lost the horse, but not the saddle. They are hooks and eyes, said my father, and with hooks and eyes he ordered my breeches to be made. End of chapter 60 to 62. Chapters 63 through 66 of Tristum Shandy, Volume 3. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ted Drury. The Life and Opinions of Tristum Shandy. Gentlemen, Volume 3 by Lawrence Stern. Chapters 63 through 66. We are now going to enter upon a new scene of events. Libri then the breeches in the tailor's hands, with my father standing over him with his cane, reading him as he sat at work, a lecture upon the lattice clavus, and pointing to the precise part of the waistband, where he was determined to have it sewed on. Libri, my mother, truest of all the poco curantes of her sex, careless about it, as about everything else in the world, served her. That is, indifferent whether it was done this way or that, provided it was but done at all. Leave we slop likewise to the full profits of all my dishonours. Leave we pour a fever to recover and get home from Marseille as he can. And last of all, because the hardest of all, let us leave, if possible, myself. But is impossible. I must go along with you to the end of the work. Chapter 64. If the reader has not a clear conception of the root and a half of ground, which lay at the bottom of my Uncle Toby's kitchen garden, in which was the scene of so many of his delicious hours, the fault is not in me, but in his imagination. For I am sure I gave him so minute a description I was almost ashamed of it. When fate was looking forwards one afternoon, into the great transactions of future times, and recollected for what purposes this little plot by a degree fast bound down in iron had been destined, she gave a nod to nature. It was enough. Nature threw half a spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so much clay in it, as to retain the forms and angles and indentings, and so little of it too, as not to cling to the spade and render works of so much glory, nasty and foul weather. My Uncle Toby came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans along with him, of almost every fortified town in Italy in Flanders, so let the Duke of Marlborough, or the Allies, have set down before what town they pleased my Uncle Toby was prepared for them. His way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this. As soon as ever a town was invested, but sooner when the design was known, to take the plan of it, let it be what town it would, and enlarge it upon a scale to the exact size of his bowling green, upon the surface of which, by means of a large roll of pack thread and a number of small pickwits driven into the ground, at several angles and redans, he transferred the lines from his paper, then taking the profile of the place with its works, determined the depths and slopes of the ditches, the talless of the glacis, and the precise height of the several banquets, parapets and such. He set the corporal to work, and sweetly went it on, the nature of the soil, the nature of the work itself, and above all, the good nature of my Uncle Toby, sitting by for morning to night and chatting kindly with the corporal upon past done deeds, but the ceremony of the name. When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper posture of defence, it was invested, and my Uncle Toby and the corporal began to run their first parallel. I beg, I may not be interrupted in my story by being told that the first parallel should be at least 300 toys as distant from the main body of the place, and that I have not left a single inch for it, for my Uncle Toby took the liberty of encroaching upon his kitchen garden, for the sake of enlarging his works on the bowling green, and for that reason generally ran his first and second parallels, but took two rows of his cabbages and his cauliflower. The conveniences and inconveniences of which will be considered at large in the history of my Uncle Toby's and the corporal's campaigns, of which this I am now writing is but a sketch, and will be finished, if I conjecture right, in three pages, but there is no guessing. The campaigns themselves will take up as many books, and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a weight in kind of matter, in so flimsy a performance as this, to rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work. Surely they had better be printed apart. We'll consider the affair. So take the following sketch of them in the meantime. Chapter 65 When the town, with its works, was finished, my Uncle Toby and the corporal began to run their first parallel, not at random or anyhow, but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run theirs. And regulating their approaches and attacks by the accounts my Uncle Toby received from the daily papers, they went on during the whole siege, step by step with the allies. When the Duke of Marlborough made a lodgement, my Uncle Toby made a lodgement too, and when the face of a bastion was battered down or a defense ruined, corporal took his maddock and did as much, and so on, gaining ground and making themselves masters of the works one after another, till the town fell into their hands. To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others, there could not have been a greater sight in world than on a post-morning, in which a practicable breach had been made by the Duke of Marlborough in the main body of the place. Two stood behind the horned beam hedge and observed the spirit with which my Uncle Toby, with trim behind him, sallied forth, the one with the gazette in his hand, the other with a spade on his shoulder to execute the contents. What an honest triumph in my Uncle Toby's looks as he marched up to the ramparts. What intense pleasure swimming in his eyes as he stood over the corporal, reading the paragraph ten times over to him as he was at work, lest, her adventure, he should make the breach an inch too wide or leave it an inch too narrow. But when the shamad was beat and the corporal helped my Uncle up it and followed with the colors in his hand to fix them upon the ramparts, heaven, earth, sea, but what a veils apostrophes, with all your elements wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draft. In this track of happiness, for many years, without one interruption to it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a week or ten days together, which detained the flander's mail and kept them so long in torture, but still towards the torture of the happy. In this track I say, did my Uncle Toby and trim move for many years, every year of which and sometimes every month from the invention of either one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them on. The first year's campaign was carried on from beginning to end in the plain and simple method I've related. In the second year, in which my Uncle Toby took liege and rouremond, he thought he might afford the expense of four handsome drawbridges, of two of which I had given an exact description in the former part of my work. At the latter end of the same year, he added a couple of gates with portcullises. These last were converted afterwards into orgs, as the better thing, and during the winter of the same year, my Uncle Toby, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at Christmas, treated himself with a handsome sentry box to stand at the corner of the bowling ring, betwixt which point and the foot of the glasses there was left a little amount for him and the corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon. The sentry box was in case of rain. All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which enabled my Uncle Toby to take the field with great splendor. My father would often say to York that if any mortal in the whole universe had done such a thing except his brother Toby, it would have been looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon the parade and prancing manner in which Louis XIV, from the beginning of the war, but particularly that very year, had taken the field. But it is not my brother Toby's nature, kind soul, my father would add to insult anyone. But let us go on. Chapter 66. I must observe that although in the first year's campaign the word town is often mentioned, yet there was no town at that time within the polygon, that addition was not made following the spring in which the bridges and the sentry box were painted, which was the third year of my Uncle Toby's campaigns. When upon his taking Amber, Bon, and Rheinberg, and Huy and Limberg, one after another, a thought came into the corporal's head that a talk of taking so many towns without one town to show for it was a very nonsensical way of going to work and so proposed to my Uncle Toby that they should have a little model of a town built for them, to be run up together with wheels, and then painted, and clapped within the interior polygon to serve for all. My Uncle Toby felt the good of the project instantly, and instantly agreed to it, but with the addition of two singular improvements, of which he was almost as proud as if he had been the original inventor of the project itself. The one was to have the town built exactly in the style of those which was most likely to be the representative with graded windows and the gable ends of the houses facing the streets such and such, as those in Ghent and Brugge, and the rest of the towns in Brevant and Flanders. The other was not to have the houses run up together as the corporal proposed, but to have every house independent, to hook on or off so as to form into the plan of whatever town they pleased. This was put directly into hand, and many and many a look of mutual congratulation was exchanged between my Uncle Toby and the corporal, as the carpenter did the work. It answered the next summer. The town was a perfect Proteus. It was Landon and Trierbach and St. Levé and Drusen and Haganau, and then it was Austin and Mennon and Athe and Dindermann. Surely never did any town act so many parts since Sodom and Gomorrah, as my Uncle Toby's town did. In the fourth year, my Uncle Toby thinking a town looked foolishly without a church added a very fine one with a steeple. Trim was for having bells in it. My Uncle Toby said the metal had better be cast into canon. This led the way the next campaign for half a dozen brass field pieces to be planted three and three on each side of my Uncle Toby's sentry box, and in a short time these led the way for a train of somewhat larger, and so on as must always be the case in hobby Horsicle affairs, from pieces of half an inch bore till it came at last to my father's jackboots. The next year which was that in which Lio was besieged and at the close of which both Gent and Bruges fell into our hands my Uncle Toby was sadly put to it for proper ammunition. I say proper ammunition because his great artillery would not bear powder and was well for the Shandy family they would not, for so full were the papers from beginning to the end of the siege of the incessant firings kept up by the besiegers and so heated was my Uncle Toby's imagination with the accounts of them that he had infallibly shot away all his state. Something therefore was wanting as a succidanium, especially in one or two of the more violent paroxysms of the siege to keep up something like a continual firing in the imagination, and this something the corporal whose principal strength lay an invention supplied by an entire new system of battering of his own without which this had been objected to by military critics to the end of the world as one of the great Besiderata of my Uncle Toby's apparatus. This will not be explained the worst for setting off as I generally do at a little distance from the subject. End of chapters 63 through 66 Chapters 67 through 70 of Tristan Shandy Volume 3 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Ted Drury The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy Gentlemen Volume 3 by Lawrence Stern Chapters 67 through 70 Chapter 70 With two or three other trinkets small in themselves, but of great regard which poor Tom, the corporal's unfortunate brother, had sent him over with the account of his marriage with the Jews widow. There was a Montero cap and two Turkish tobacco pipes. The Montero cap I shall describe by and by. The Turkish tobacco pipes had nothing particular in them. They were fitted up and ornamented as usual with flexible tubes of Morocco leather and gold wire and mounted at their ends the one of them with ivory, the other with black ebony, tipped with silver. My father, who saw all things in lights different from the rest of the world would say to the corporal that he ought to look upon these two presents more as tokens of brother's nicety than his affection. Tom did not care, trim he would say, to put on the cap or to smoke in the tobacco pipe of a Jew. God bless your honour, the corporal would say, giving a strong reason to the contrary, how can that be? The Montero cap was scarlet of a super fine Spanish cloth dyed in grain and mounted all round with fur except about four inches in the front which was faced with a light blue slightly embroidered and seemed to have been the property of a Portuguese quarter master not a foot but of horse as the word denotes. The corporal was not a little proud of it as well for its own sake as the sake of the giver so seldom or never put it on but upon gala days and yet never was a Montero cap put to so many uses for an all-controverted points whether military or culinary provided the corporal was sure he was in the right it was either his oath, his wager or his gift it was his gift in the present case I'll be bound said the corporal speaking to himself to give away my Montero cap to the first beggar who comes to the door if I do not manage this matter to his honour's satisfaction the completion was no further off than the very next morning which was that of the storm of the counterscarp betwixt the lower duel to the right and the gate-state Andrew and on the left between St. Magdalene's and the river as this was the most memorable attack in the whole war the most gallant and obstinate on both sides and I must add the most bloody too for it cost the allies themselves that morning above 1100 men my Uncle Tobi prepared himself for it with a more than ordinary salinity the eWooch proceeded as my Uncle Tobi went to bed he ordered his Rami Yi wig which had laid inside out for many years in the corner of an old campaigning trunk which stood by his bedside to be taken out and laid upon the lid of it ready for the morning and the very first thing he did in his shirt when he stepped out of bed my Uncle Tobi after he had turned the rough side outwards put it on this done he proceeded next to his breeches and having buttoned the waistband he forthwith buckled on his sword belt and had got his sword halfway in when he considered he should want shaving and that it would be very inconvenient doing it with his sword on so took it off with his regimental coat and waistcoat my Uncle Tobi found the same objection in his wig so that went off too so that with one thing and what with another as always falls out when a man is in the most haste to his ten o'clock which was half an hour later than his usual time before my Uncle Tobi sallied out chapter 68 my Uncle Tobi had scarce turned the corner of his eWooch which separated his kitchen garden from his bowling green when he perceived the corporal had begun the attack without him let me stop and give you a picture of the corporal's apparatus and of the corporal himself in the height of his attack just as it struck my Uncle Tobi as he turned towards the sentry box where the corporal was at work for in nature there is not such another nor can any combination of all that is grotesque and whimsical in her works produce its equal the corporal dread lightly on his ashes ye men of genius for he was your kinsman weed his grave clean ye men of goodness for he was your brother so had I thee but now now that I am able to give thee a dinner in protection how would I cherish thee thou shalt wear thy Montero cap every hour of the day and every day of the week and it was worn out I would purchase thee a couple like it but alas alas alas now that I can do this in spite of their references the occasion is lost for thou art gone thy genius fled up to the stars from whence it came and that warm heart of thine with all its generous and open vessels compressed into a cloud of the valley but what what is this that future and dreaded page where I look towards the velvet Paul decorated with the military incense of thy master the first the foremost of created beings where I shall see thee faithful servant laying his sword in scabbard with a trembling hand across his coffin and then returning pale as ashes to the door to take his morning horse by the bridle to follow his hearse as he directed thee where all my father's systems shall be baffled by his sorrows and in spite of his philosophy I shall behold him as he inspects the lacquered plate twice taking his spectacles off from his nose to wipe away the dew which nature has shed upon them when I see him cast in the rosemary with an air of disconciliation which cries through my ears O Toby in what corner of the world shall I seek thy fellow gracious powers which heirs to open the lips of the dumb in his distress and may the tongue of the stammerer speak plain when I shall arrive at this dreaded page deal not with me then with a stinted hand Chapter 69 The corporal who the night before had resolved in his mind to supply the grand desideratum of keeping up something like an incessant firing upon the enemy during the heat of the attack had no further idea in his fancy at that time than a contravence of smoking tobacco against the town out of one of my uncle Toby's six field pieces which were planted on each side of his sentry box the means of effecting which occurring to his fancy at the same time though he had pledged his cap he thought it in no danger from the miscarriage of his projects Upon turning it this way and that a little in his mind he soon began to find out that by means of his two Turkish tobacco pipes with a supplement of three smaller tubes of wash leather at each of their lower ends to be tagged by the same number of tin pipes fitted to the touch holes and sealed with clay next to the cannon and then tied hermetically with waxed silk at their several insertions into the Morocco tube he should be able to fire the six field pieces all together and with the same ease as the fire one let no man say from what tags and jags hints may not be cut out for the advancement of human knowledge who has read my father's first and second beds of justice ever rise up and say again from collision of what kinds of bodies light may or may not be struck out to carry the arts and sciences up to perfection heaven thou knowest how I love them thou knowest the secrets of my heart and that I would this moment give my shirt thou art a fool Shandy says Eugenius for thou hast but a dozen in the world and will break thy set no matter for that Eugenius tried back to be burnt into tinder were it only to satisfy one feverish inquirer how many sparks at one good stroke a good flint and steel could strike into the tail of it think ye not that in striking these in he might per adventure strike something out as sure as a gun but this project by the by the corporal set up the best part of the night in bringing his to perfection and having made a sufficient proof of his cannon with charging them to the top with tobacco and in the middle of the night the corporal had slipped out about ten minutes before my uncle Toby in order to fix his apparatus and just give the enemy a shot or two before my uncle Toby came he had drawn the sixth field pieces for this end all close up together in front of my uncle Toby's sentry box leaving only an interval of about a yard and a half but twist three and on the right and left for the convenience of charging in such and the sake possibly of two batteries double the honor of one in the rear and facing this opening with his back to the door of the sentry box for fear of being flanked have the corporal wisely taken his post he held the ivory pipe appertaining to the battery on the right but wicks the finger and thumb of his right hand and the ebony pipe ticked with silver which appertain to the battery on the left but wicks the finger and thumb of the other and with his right knee fixed firm upon the ground as if in the front rake of his platoon was the corporal with his Montero cap upon his head furiously playing off his two cross batteries at the same time against the counter guard which faced the counterscarp where the attack was to be made that morning his first intention, as I said was no more than giving the enemy a single puffer to but the pleasure of the puffs as well as the puffing had insensibly got hold of the corporal and drawn him on from puff to puff into the very height of the attack by the time my uncle Toby joined him was well for my father and my uncle Toby had not his will to make that day End of Chapters 67-70