 Chapter 48. You chairman? Here six friends do step into that bookseller shop and call me a day tall critic. I am very willing to give any one of them a crown to help me with his tackling, to get my father and my ingratobi off the stairs and to put them to bed. There's even high time, for except a short nap, which they both got whilst Trim was jackboots, and which by the by did my father no sort of good upon the score of the bat hinge, they have not else shut their eyes, since nine hours before the time that Dr Slopp was let into the back parlor in their dirty pickle by Obadiah. Was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this, and to take up? True. I will not finish of that sentence till I have made an observation upon the strange state of affairs between the reader and myself, just as a thing stand at present, an observation never applicable before to any one biographical writer, since of the creation of the world. But to myself, and I believe, will never hold good to any other until its final destruction, and therefore, for the very novelty of it alone, it must be worth your worship's attending to. I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve months, and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my third volume, according to the preceding editions, and no farther than to my first day's life, it is demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty four days more life to write just now than when I first set out, so that, instead of advancing as a common writer, in my work with what I have been doing at it, on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back, was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this, and why not, and the transactions and opinions of it to take up as much description, and for what reason should they be cut short, as at this rate I should just live three hundred and sixty four times faster than I should write. It must follow, and please your worships, that the more I write, the more I shall have to write, and consequently, the more your worships read, the more your worships will have to read. Will this be good for your worships eyes? It will do well for mine. And was it not that my opinions will be the death of me, I perceive I shall lead a fine life of it out of this self-same life of mine, or in other words, shall lead a couple of fine lives together? As for the proposal of twelve volumes a year, or a volume a month, in no way alters my prospect, write as I will, and rush as I may into the middle of things, as Horace advices, I shall never overtake myself whipped and driven to the last pinch. At the worst, I shall have one day the start of my pen, and one day is enough for two volumes, and two volumes will be enough for one year. Haven't prospered the manufacturers of paper and that this propitious reign which is now open to us, as I trust its providence will prosper everything else in it that is taken in hand. As for the propagation of keys, I give myself no concern. Nature is all bountiful. I shall never want tools to work with. So then, friend, you have got my father and my uncle Toby off the stairs, and seem them to bed. And how did you manage it? You dropped a curtain up the stair-foot. I thought you had no other way for it. He's a ground for your trouble. Then reach me, my breeches of the chair, said my father to Susanna. The first not a moment's time to dress you, sir, cried Susanna. The child is as black and the face is my— As your what, said my father, for like all orators he was a dear surcher into comparisons. Bless me, sir, said Susanna, the child's in a fit. And where's Miss Eurick? Never where he should be, said Susanna. But a scurret's in the dressing-room with the child upon his arm, waiting for the name, and my mistress bid me run as fast as I could to know, as Captain Shanley is a godfather, whether it should not be called after him. Where one sure, said my father to himself, scratching his eyebrow, that a child was expiring, one might as well compliment my brother Toby as not, and it would be a pity in such a case to throw away so great a name as Dresmigistus upon him, but he may recover. No, no, said my father to Susanna. I'll get up. There's no time, cried Susanna. The child's as black as my shoe. Dresmigistus, said my father. But stay, thou out-a-league of vessel, Susanna, added my father. Canst thou carry Dresmigistus in thy hat, the length of the gallery without scattering? Can I, cried Susanna, shutting the door in a half? If she can, I'll be shot, said my father, bouncing out of bed in the dark and groping for his breeches. Susanna ran with all speed along the gallery. My father made all possible speed to find his breeches. Susanna got the start, and kept it. Tis, dress something, cried Susanna. There's no Christian name in the world, said the curate, beginning with Triss, but Tristum. But this Dresmigistus quits Susanna. There's no Gissit in it, noodle. Does my own name? replied the curate, dipping his hand as he spoke into the basin. Tristum, said he, etc., etc., etc., etc. So Tristum was I called, and Tristum shall I be to the day of my death. My father followed Susanna, with his nightgown across his arm, with nothing more than his breeches on, fastened through haste with but a single button, and that button through haste thrust only half in the button-hole. She has not forgot the name, cried my father, half opening the door. No, no, said the curate, with a turn of intelligence. And the child is better, cried Susanna. And how does he mistress? As well, said Susanna, as can be expected. Pish, said my father, the button of his breech is slipping out of the button-hole. So that whether the interjection was levelled at Susanna, or the button-hole, whether Pish was an interjection of contempt, or an interjection of modesty, is a doubt, and must be a doubt till I shall have time to write the three following favourite chapters, that is, my chapter of chamber-maids, my chapter of pitchers, and my chapter of button-holes. All the light I am able to give the reader at present is this. That moment my father cried, Pish! He whisked himself about, and with his breeches held up by one hand, and his nightgown thrown across the arm of the other, he turned along the gallery to bed, something slower than he came. CHAPTER 51 If my wife will but venture him, Brother Toby, Trismegistus shall be dressed and brought down to us, whilst you and I are getting our breakfast together. Go, tell Susanna Obadiah to step here. She has run upstairs, answered Obadiah, this very instant, sobbing and crying, and wringing her hands as if her heart would break. We shall have a rare month of it, said my father, turning his head from Obadiah, and looking wistfully in my uncle Toby's face for some time. We shall have a devilish month of it, Brother Toby, said my father, setting his arms akimbo and shaking his head. Fire, water, women, wind, Brother Toby. Tis some misfortune, quoth my uncle Toby. That it is, cried my father, to have so many jarring elements, breaking loose and riding triumph in every corner of a gentleman's house, little boots it to the peace of a family, Brother Toby, that you and I possess ourselves and sit here silent and unmoved, whilst such a storm is whistling over our heads. And what's the matter, Susanna? They have called the child Tristram, and my mistress has just got out of an hysteric fit about it. No. It is not my fault, said Susanna. I told him it was Tristram just as. Make tea for yourself, Brother Toby, said my father, taking down his hat, but how different from the sallies and agitations of voice and members which a common reader would imagine, for he spake in the sweetest modulation, and took down his hat with the gentilist movement of limbs that ever affliction harmonized and attuned together. Go to the bowling-green for corporal trim, said my uncle Toby, speaking to Obadiah as soon as my father left the room. Chapter 52 When the misfortune of my nose fell so heavily upon my father's head, the reader remembers that he walked instantly upstairs and cast himself down upon his bed, and from hence, unless he has a great insight into human nature, he will be apt to expect a rotation of the same ascending and descending movements from him upon this misfortune of my name. No. The different weight, dear sir, nay, even the different package of two vexations of the same weight makes a very wide difference in our manner of bearing and getting through with them. It is not half an hour ago when, in the great hurry and precipitation of a poor devil's writing for daily bread, I threw a fair sheet, which I had just finished, and carefully rode out, slap into the fire instead of the foul one. Instantly I snatched off my wig and threw it perpendicularly, with all imaginable violence up to the top of the room. Indeed I caught it as it fell. But there was an end to the matter, nor do I think anything else in nature would have given such immediate ease. She, dear goddess, by an instantaneous impulse in all provoking cases determines us to a sally of this or that member, or else she thrusts us into this or that place or posture of body. We know not why. But, Mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries. The most obvious things which come in our way have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into, and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss at almost every cranny of nature's works. So that this, like a thousand other things, falls out for us in a way, which, though we cannot reason upon it, yet we find the good of it. May it please your reverences and your worships, and that's enough for us. Now my father could not lie down with this affliction for his life, nor could he carry it upstairs like the other. He walked compulsively out with it to the fish pond. Had my father leaned his head upon his hand and reasoned an hour which way to have gone, reason with all her force could not have directed him to anything like it. There is something, sir, in fish ponds, but what it is I leave to system builders and fish pond diggers betwixt him to find out. But there is something, under the first disorderly transport of the humors, so unaccountably be calming and in orderly and a sober walk towards one of them, that I have often wondered that neither Pythagoras, nor Plato, nor Solon, nor Lycurgus, nor Mahomet, nor any one of your noted law-givers ever gave order about them. Chapter 53 Your honor, said Trim, shutting the parlor door before he began to speak, has heard, I imagine, of this unlucky accident. Oh, yes, Trim, said my Uncle Toby, and it gives me great concern. I am heartily concerned too, but I hope your honor, replied Trim, will do me the justice to believe that it was not in the least owing to me. To thee, Trim, cried my Uncle Toby, looking kindly in his face. Twas Susanna's and the curate's folly betwixt him. What business could they have together, and please your honor, in the garden? In the gallery, thou meanest, replied my Uncle Toby. Trim found he was upon a wrong scent, and stopped short with a low bow. Two misfortunes, quoth the corporal to himself, are twice as many at least as are needful to be talked over at one time. The mischief the cow has done in breaking into the fortifications may be told his honor hereafter. Trim's causuastry and address, under the cover of his low bow, prevented all suspicion in my Uncle Toby, so he went on with what he had to say to Trim as follows. For my own part, Trim, though I can see little or no difference betwixt my nephews being called Tristram or Trismegistus, yet as the thing sits so near my brother's heart, Trim, I would freely have given a hundred pounds rather than it should have happened. A hundred pounds, and please your honor, replied Trim, I would not give a cherry stone to boot. Nor would I, Trim, upon my own account, quoth my Uncle Toby, but my brother, whom there is no arguing with in this case, maintains that a great deal more depends, Trim, upon Christian names than what ignorant people imagine, for he says there never was a greater heroic action performed since the world began by one called Tristram. Nay, he will have it, Trim, that a man can either be learned or wise or brave. Tis all fancy, and please your honor, I fought just as well, replied the corporal, when the regiment called me Trim as when they called me James Butler. And for my own part, said my Uncle Toby, though I should blush to boast of it myself, Trim, yet had my name been Alexander, I could have done no more at Namur than my duty. Bless your honor, cried Trim, advancing three steps as he spoke. Does a man think of his Christian name when he goes upon the attack? Or when he stands in the trench, Trim, cried my Uncle Toby, looking firm. Or when he enters a breach, said Trim, pushing in between two chairs. Or forces the lines, cried my Uncle, rising up and pushing his crutch like a pike. Or facing a platoon, cried Trim, presenting his stick like a firelock. Or when he marches up the glaces, cried my Uncle Toby, looking warm and setting his foot upon his stool. End of Chapter 51-53 Recording by Nick Number Chapter 54-54 My father was returned from his walk to the fish pond and opened the parlor door in the very height of the attack, just as my Uncle Toby was marching up the glaces. Trim recovered his arms. Never was my Uncle Toby caught in riding at such a desperate raid in his life. Alas, my Uncle Toby, had not a weightier matter called forth all the ready eloquence of my father. How hadst thou then and thy poor hobby-horse-tube been insulted? My father hung up his hat with the same air he took it down, and after giving a slight look at the disorder of the room he took hold of one of the chairs which had formed the corporal's breach, and placing it over against my Uncle Toby, he sat down in it, and as soon as the tea-things were taken away and the door shut, he broke out in a lamentation as follows. My father's lamentation. It is in vain longer, said my father, addressing himself as much to Urnulfis's curse which was laid upon the corner of the chimney-piece, as to my Uncle Toby who sat under it. It is in vain longer, said my father, in the most quarelless monotony imaginable. To struggle as I have done against this most uncomfortable of human persuasions. I see it plainly that either for my own sins, Brother Toby, or the sins and follies of the Shandy family, Heaven has thought fit to draw forth the heaviest of its artillery against me, and that the prosperity of my child is the point upon which the whole force of it is directed to play. Such a thing would batter the whole universe about our ears, Brother Shandy, said my Uncle Toby, if it was so. Unhappy Tristram, child of wrath, child of decrepitude, interruption, mistake, and discontent. What one misfortune or disaster in the book of embryotic evils that could unmechanize thy frame or entangle thy filaments, which has not fallen upon thy head or ever thou camest into the world. What evils in thy passage into it? What evils since? Produced into being in the decline of thy father's days when the powers of his imagination and of his body were waxing feeble, when radical heat and radical moisture, the elements which should have tempered thine were drying up, and nothing left to found thy stamina in but negations. Tis pitiful, Brother Toby, at the best, and called out for all the little helps that care and attention on both sides could give it. But how were we defeated? You know the event, Brother Toby. Tis two melancholia won to be repeated now, when the few animal spirits I was worth in the world, and with which memory, fancy, and quick parts should have been conveyed, were all dispersed, confused, confounded, scattered, and sent to the devil. Here, then, was the time to have put a stop to this persecution against him, and tried an experiment, at least, whether calmness and serenity of mind in your sister with a due attention, Brother Toby, to her evacuations and repletions, and the rest of her non-naturals, might not, in a course of nine months gestation, have said all things to rights. My child was bereft of these. What a teasing life did she lead herself, and consequently her fetus, too, with that nonsensical anxiety of hers about lying in in town. I thought my sister submitted with the greatest patience, replied my Uncle Toby. I never heard her utter one fretful word about it. She fumed inwardly, cried my father, and that, let me tell you, brother, was ten times worse for the child. And then, what battles did she fight with me, and what perpetual storms about the midwife? There she gave vent, said my Uncle Toby. Vent, cried my father, looking up. But what was all this, my dear Toby, to the injuries done us by my child's coming head foremost into the world, when all I wished in this general wreck of his frame was to have saved this little casket, unbroke, unrifled. With all my precautions, how has my system turned topside turvy in the womb with my child, his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a pressure of four hundred seventy pounds of war du pois weight acting so perpendicularly upon its apex that at this hour it is ninety percent insurance that the fine network of the intellectual web be not rent and torn to a thousand tatters. Still we could have done. Fool, cockscum, puppy, give him but a nose. Cripple, dwarf, driveler, goosecap, shape him as you will. The door of fortune stands open. Oh, Lisettus, Lisettus, had I been blessed with a feet as five inches long and a half like thee, fate might have done her worst. Still, brother Toby, there was one cast of the die left for our child after all. Oh, tristrum, tristrum, tristrum. We will send for Mr. York, said my Uncle Toby. You may send for whom you will, replied my father. Chapter Fifty-Five What a rate have I gone on at, curvetting and striking it away, two up and two down for three volumes, according to the preceding editions, together without looking once behind or even on one side of me to see whom I trod upon. I'll tread upon no one, quoth I to myself when I mounted. I'll take a good rattling gallop, but I'll not hurt the poorest jackass upon the road. So off I set, up one lane, down another, through this turnpike, over that, as if the arch-jockey of jockeys had got behind me. Now ride at this rate with what good intention and resolution you may, to a million to one you'll do someone a mischief, if not yourself. He's flung, he's off, he's lost his hat, he's down, he'll break his neck, see, if he is not galloped full among the scaffolding of the undertaking critics. He'll knock his brains out against some of their posts, he's bounced out, look, he's now riding like a madcap, full tilt through a whole crowd of painters, fiddlers, poets, biographers, physicians, lawyers, logicians, players, schoolmen, churchmen, statesmen, soldiers, causuists, connoisseurs, prelates, popes, and engineers. Don't fear, said I, I'll not hurt the poorest jackass upon the king's highway. But your horse throws dirt, see, you've splashed a bishop. I hope in God twas only your nulfus, said I. But you have squirted full in the faces of Messier's Lemoine, de Romanie, and de Marseille, doctors of the Sorbonne. That was last year, replied I. But you have trod this moment upon a king. Kings have bad times, aunt, said I, to be trod upon by such people as me. You have done it, replied my accuser. I deny it, quoth I, and so have got off, and here am I standing with my bridle in one hand and with my cap in the other to tell my story. And what in it? You shall hear in the next chapter. Chapter 56 As Francis I of France was one winterly night warming himself over the embers of a wood fire and talking with his first minister of sundry things for the good of the state, Ouide Menagiana, Volume I, it would not be a miss, said the king, stirring up the embers with his cane, if this good understanding betwixt ourselves in Switzerland was a little strengthened. There is no end, sire, replied the minister, in giving money to these people. They would swallow up the treasury of France. Poupou, answered the king, there are more ways, Monsiola premier of bribing states besides that of giving money. I'll pay Switzerland the honor of standing godfather for my next child. Your Majesty, said the minister, in so doing would have all the grammarians in Europe upon your back. Switzerland as a republic, being a female, can in no construction be godfather. She may be godmother, replied Francis hastily, so announce my intentions by a courier tomorrow morning. I am astonished, said Francis I, that day fortnight, speaking to his minister as he entered the closet, that we have had no answer from Switzerland. Sire, I wait upon you this moment, said Monsiola premier, to lay before you my dispatches upon that business. They take it kindly, said the king. They do, sire, replied the minister, and have the highest sense of the honor your majesty has done them, but the republic, as godmother, claims her right in this case of naming the child. In all reason, quoth the king, she will christen him Francis, or Henry, or Louis, or some name that she knows will be agreeable to us. Your Majesty is deceived, replied the minister. I have this hour received a dispatch from our resident with the determination of the republic on that point also. And what name has the republic fixed upon for the Dauphin? Shadrach, Messek, Abednego, replied the minister. By St. Peter's girdle, I will have nothing to do with the Swiss, cried Francis I, pulling up his breeches and walking hastily across the floor. Your Majesty, replied the minister calmly, cannot bring yourself off. We'll pay them in monies, said the king. Sire, there are not sixty thousand crowns in the treasury, answered the minister. I'll pawn the best jewel in my crown, quoth Francis I. Your honor stands pawned already in this matter, answered Montseerlet Premier. Then Montseerlet Premier, said the king. Bye, we'll go to war with him. Chapter 57 Albeit gentle reader I have lusted earnestly and endeavored carefully according to the measure of such a slender skill as God has vouched saved me, and as convenient leisure from other occasions of needful profit and helpful pastime have permitted, that these little books which I here put into thy hands might stand instead of many bigger books. Yet if I carried myself towards the in such fanciful guise of careless despot, that right sore am I ashamed now to entreat thy lenity seriously, in beseeching thee to believe it of me, that in the story of my father and his Christian names I have no thoughts of treading upon Francis I, nor in the affair of the nose upon Francis IX, nor in the character of my uncle Toby, of characterizing the militating spirits of my country, the wound upon his groin is a wound to every comparison of that kind, nor by trim that I meant the Duke of Ormond, or that my book is wrote against predestination, or free will, or taxes. If tis wrote against anything, tis wrote in pleaser worships against the spleen, in order, by a more frequent and a more convulsive elevation and depression of the diaphragm and the succussations of the intercostal and abdominal muscles and laughter, to drive the gall and other bitter juices from the gallbladder, liver, and sweetbread of his majesty's subjects with all the inamiscitous passions which belong to them down into their duodenums. CHAPTER XVIII But can the thing be undone, Yorick, said my father? For in my opinion, continued he, it cannot. I am a vile canonist, replied Yorick, but of all evils holding suspense to be the most tormenting we shall at least know the worst of this matter. I hate these great dinners, said my father. The size of the dinner is not the point, answered Yorick. We want, Mr. Shandy, to dive into the bottom of this doubt whether the name can be changed or not, and as the beards of so many commissaries, officials, advocates, proctors, registers, and of the most eminent of our school-devines and others are all to meet in the middle of one table, and Didius has so pressingly invited you, who in your distress would miss such an occasion. All that is requisite, continued Yorick, is to apprise Didius and let him manage a conversation after dinner so as to introduce the subject. Then my brother Toby, cried my father, clapping his two hands together, shall go with us. Let my old tie-wig, quothed my uncle Toby, and my laced regimentals be hung to the fire all night, trim. Page numbering skips ten pages. Chapter 60 No doubt, sir, there is a whole chapter wanting here, and a chasm of ten pages made in the book by it, but the bookbinder is neither a fool or a nave or a puppy, nor is the book a jot more imperfect, at least upon that score, but on the contrary the book is more perfect and complete by wanting the chapter than having it, as I shall demonstrate to your reverences in this manner. I question first, by the by, whether the same experiment might not be made as successfully upon sundry other chapters, but there is no end in pleaser reverences and trying experiments upon chapters. We have had enough of it, so there's an end of that matter. But before I begin my demonstration, let me only tell you that the chapter which I have torn out, and which otherwise you would all have been reading just now instead of this, was the description of my father's, my uncle Toby's, Trim's, and Obadiah's setting out and journeying to the visitation at... We'll go in the coach, said my father. Prithee, have the arms been altered, Obadiah? It would have made my story much better to have begun with telling you that at the time my mother's arms were added to the chandies, when the coach was repainted upon my father's marriage, it had so fallen out that the coach painter, whether by performing all his works with the left hand, like Tripilius the Roman, or Hans Holbein of Basil, or whether it was more from the blender of his head than hand, or whether lastly it was from the sinister turn which everything relating to our family was apt to take, it so fell out, however, to our reproach that instead of the Ben Dexter, which since Harry the Eight's reign was honestly our due, a Ben Sinister by some of these fatalities had been drawn quite across the field of the shandy arms. To his scarce credible that the mind of so wise a man as my father was could be so much incommodated with so small a matter. The word coach, let it be who's it would, or coach men, or coach horse, or coach hire, could never be named in the family, but he constantly complained of carrying this vile mark of illegitimacy upon the door of his own. He never once was able to step into the coach, or out of it, without turning round to take a view of the arms, and making a vow at the same time that it was the last time he would ever set his foot in it again till the Ben Sinister was taken out. But like the affair of the hinge, it was one of the many things which the destinies had set down in their books ever to be grumbled at, and in wiser families than ours, but never to be mended. Has the Ben Sinister been brushed out, I say, said my father? There has been nothing brushed out, sir, answered Obadiah, but the lining. We'll go a horseback, said my father, turning to Yorick. Of all things in the world, except politics, the clergy know the least of herald race, said Yorick. No matter for that, cried my father, I should be sorry to appear with a blot in my escutcheon before them. Never mind the Ben Sinister, said my Uncle Toby, putting on his tie-wig. No indeed, said my father. You may go with my Aunt Dinah to a visitation with a Ben Sinister if you think fit. My poor Uncle Toby blushed. My father was vexed at himself. No. My dear brother Toby, said my father, changing his tone. But the damp of the coach lining about my loins may give me the sciatica again, as it did December, January, and February last winter. So if you please, you shall ride my wife's pad, and as you are to preach, Yorick, you would better make the best of your way before, and leave me to take care of my brother Toby, and to follow at our own rates. Now the chapter I was obliged to tear out was the description of this cavalcade, in which corporal trim and obadiah, upon two coach-horses abreast, led the way as slow as a patrol, whilst my Uncle Toby, and his laced regimentals and tie-wig, kept his rank with my father, in deep roads and dissertations alternately upon the advantage of learning and arms, as each could get the start. But the painting of this journey, upon reviewing it, appears to be so much above the style and manner of anything else I have been able to paint in this book that it could not have remained in it without depreciating every other scene, and destroying at the same time that necessary equipoise and balance, whether of good or bad, betwixt chapter in chapter, from whence the just proportions and harmony of the whole work results. For my own part I am but just set up in the business, so no little about it, but in my opinion, to write a book is for all the world like humming a song. Be but in tune with yourself, madame, tis no matter how high or how low you take it. This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that some of the lowest and flattest compositions pass off very well, as Yorick told my Uncle Toby one night, by siege. My Uncle Toby looked brisk at the sound of the word siege, but could make neither head or tail of it. I'm to preach at court next Sunday, said Hominus, run over my notes, so I hummed over Dr. Hominus's notes, the modulations very well, twill do, Hominus, if it holds on at this rate, so on I hummed. And a tolerable tune I thought it was, and to this hour, may it please your reverences, had never found out how low, how flat, how spiritless and jejunate was, but that all of a sudden upstarted an air in the middle of it, so fine, so rich, so heavenly, it carried my soul up with it into the other world. Now had I, as Bontain complained in a parallel accident, had I found the declivity easy or the assent accessible, surtease I had been outwitted. Your notes, Hominus, I should have said, are good notes, but it was so perpendicular precipice, so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that by the first note I hummed I found myself flying into the other world, and from thence discovered the veil from whence I came, so deep, so low, and dismal, that I shall never have the heart to descend into it again. A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size, take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one, and so much for tearing out of chapters. End of chapters 56 to 60 Recording by Nick Number Chapter 61 to 62 of Tristram Shandy, Volume 2 This is a Libri-Foxy-cording, or Libri-Foxy-cording turned a public domain, for more information or to volunteer, please visit Libri-Fox.org Recording by Shaleefa Molliam The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Tentament Volume 2 by Laurence Stern Chapter 61 See, if he is not cutting it into slips and giving them about him to light their pibes, it is abominable, answered Didius. He should not go unnoticed, said Dr. Caesarchius. He was one of the Caesarchi of the Low Countries. Me thinks, said Didius, half-rising from his chair, in order to remove a bottle at a tall decanter, which is stood in the direct line between Tim and Yorick. You might have sped this sarcastic stroke and have hit upon a mere proper place, Mr. Yorick, or at least upon a more proper occasion to have shown your contempt of what you have been about. If the sermon is of no better worth than to light the pibes with, does certainly sound not good enough to be breached before so learned to body, and if it was good enough to be breached before so learned to body, does certainly sound too good to light their pibes with afterwards. I have gotten fast hung up. Didius to himself, upon one of the two horns of my dilemma, to let him get off as he can. I have undergone such unspeakable torment in bringing forth this sermon, close Yorick, upon this occasion, that I declare, Didius, I would suffer martyrdom, and if it was possible, my horse whist me a thousand times over, before I would sit down and make such another. I was delivered of it at the wrong end of me. It came from my head instead of my heart, and this for the pain it gave to me both in writing and preaching of it, that I revenge myself of it in this manner. To breach, to shoe the extent of our reading, or the subtleties of our wit, to parade in the eyes of the vulgar with a baggily account of the little learning, since not over was a few words which glitter, but of a little light and less warmth, is dishonest use of the poor single half hour in a week which is put into our hands. It is not preaching the gospel, but ourselves, for my own part, continued Eurig. I had rather direct five words point blank to his heart. As Eurig pronounced the word point blank, my uncle Toby rose up to say something upon projectiles, when the single word and no more uttered from the opposite side of the table drew everyone's ears towards it, a word of all others in the dictionary, the last in that place to be expected, a word, I am ashamed to write, yet must be written, must be read, illegal and canonical, guess ten thousand guesses multiplied into themselves, rack, torture your invention forever, your way was. In short, I'll tell it in the next chapter. Chapter 62 Zounds Zounds cried for notorious partly to himself, and yet high enough to be heard, and what seemed odd, it was asset in the construction of look and in a tone of voice, somewhat between that of a man in amazement and one in bodily pain. One or two had very nice ears, and could distinguish if the expression a mixture of the two tones as plainly as a third or a fifth, or any other chord in music, by the most puzzled and perplexed with it, the concord was good in itself, but then it was quite out of the key, and no way applicable to the subject started, so as it was all their knowledge, they could not tell what in the world to make of it. Others, who knew nothing of musical expressions, and merely lent their ears to the plain import of the word, imagined that phytotorias, who was somewhat of a choleric spirit, was just going to snatch the cuddles out of Dideus's hands in order to be more yoric to some purpose, and that a desperate monosyllable sound was the exodium to an oration, which, as they judged from the sample, pre-staged but a rough kind of handling of him, so as that my uncle Toby's good nature felt a pang for what Yorick was about to undergo. But seeing phytotorias stop short without any attempt or desire to go on, a third party began to suppose that it was no more than an involuntary respiration, casually forming itself into the shape of a twelfth panios, without a sin or substance of one. Others, and especially one or two who sat next to him, looked upon it on the country as a real and a substantial oath, propensally formed against Yorick, to whom he was known to bear no good liking, which said oaths, as my father philosophised upon it, actually fretting and fuming at that very time of the upper regions of phytotorian's pertinence, and so was naturally, and according to the due cause of things, first squeezed out by the sudden influx of blood, which was driven into the right ventricle, of phytotorias's heart, by the stroke of surprise which so strange a theory of breaching had excited. How finally we argue upon mistaken facts! There was not a soul busyed in all these various reasonings upon the monosyllable which phytotorias uttered, who did not take this for granted, proceeding upon it as from an axiom, namely that phytotorias's mind was intent upon the subject of debate, which was arising between Didius and Yorick, and indeed, as he looked first towards the one, and then towards the other, was the air of a man listening to what was going forward, who would not have thought the same. But the truth was, that phytotorias knew not one word or one syllable of what was passing, but as all sorts and attention were taken up with the transaction, which was going forward at that very instant, within the presence of his own Gallegaskans, and in a part of them, whereof all others he stood most interested to watch accidents, so that notwithstanding he looked with all the attention in the world, and had gradually screwed up every nerve and muscle in his face, to the utmost pitch the instrument would bear, in order, as it was thought, to give a sharp reply to Yorick, who said over against him, yet I say, was Yorick never once in any one domicile of phytotorias's brain, but at through cause of his exclamation lay at least a yard below. This I will endeavour to explain you with all imaginable decency. You must be informed, then, that gastropheres, who had taken a turn into the kitchen a little before dinner, to see how things went on, observing a wicker basket of fine chestnuts, standing upon the dresser, had ordered that a hundred or two of them might be roasted and sent in, as soon as dinner was over. Gastropheres, enforcing his orders about them, that did yes, but phytotorias especially, were particularly fond of him. About two minutes before the time that myocotobia interrupted Yorick's harangue, gastropheres' chestnuts were brought in, and as phytotorias' fondness realm was uppermost in the weight his head, he laid them directly before phytotorias, wrapped up hot in a clean domestic napkin. Now, whether it was physically impossible, was half a dozen all thrust into his napkin at a time, but that some one chestnut of more life and rotundity than the rest, must be put in motion. It so fell out, however, that one was actually sent rolling off the table, and as phytotorias had straddling under, it fell perpendicular into that particular aperture of phytotorias' breeches, for which, to the shame and indelicacy of our language we spoke, there is no chaste word throughout all Johnson's dictionary. Let us suffice to say, it was that particular aperture, which in all good societies, the laws of Decurum, do strictly require, like the Temple of Janus, and peace at least, to be universally shut up. The neglect of this phytotorias, which, by and so by, should be warning to all mankind, had opened a door to this accident. Accident, I call it, in compliance to received mode of speaking, but in no opposition to the opinion either of acreties or misogyras in this matter. I know they were both pre-possessed and fully persuaded of it, and are so to this hour, that there was nothing of accident in the whole event, but that a chestnut's taking that particular cause, and in a manner of its own accord, and then falling, with all its heed, directly into that one particular place, and no other, was a real judgement upon phytotorias, for that filthy and obscene treatise, the concubines, written andes, which phytotorias had published about twenty years ago, and was of that identical week, going to give the world the second edition of. It is not my business to dip my pen in this controversy, much undoubtedly may be wrote on both sides of the question. All that concerns me as a historian, is to represent the matter of fact, and render it credible to his reader, that a hiatus in phytotorias's reaches was sufficiently wide to receive the chestnut, and that a chestnut, somehow or other, did fall perpendicularly, and pie being hot into it, without phytotorias perceiving it, or anyone else at that time. The genial warmth, which the chestnut imparted, was not undelectable for the first twenty-five and twenty seconds, and did no more than gently solidate phytotorias' attention towards a part, but a heed gradually increasing, and in a few seconds more getting beyond the point of all sober pleasure, and then advancing with all speed into the regions of pain, the soul of phytotorias to gather with all his ideas, his thoughts, his attention, his imagination, judgement, resolution, deliberation, racialization, memory, fancy, with ten battalions of animal spirit, all tumultuously crowded down through different defiles and circuits, to the place of danger, leaving all his upper regions, as you may imagine, as empty as my purse. With the best intelligence, which all these messengers could bring him back, phytotorias was not able to dive into the secret of what was going forwards below, nor could he make any kind of conductor, for the devil was a matter with it. However, as he knew not what the cause might earn out, he deemed it most prudent in the situation he was in at present, to bear it, if possible, like a stoic, which, with the help of some rye faces and compersions of the mouths, he had certainly accomplished, had his imagination continued new to her. But the sallies of the imagination are ungovernable in things of this kind. A thought instantly darted into his mind, that though the anguish had the sensation of glowing heat, it might, notwithstanding that, be abide as well as burn. And if so, that possibly nude or inesca, or some such detested reptile, had crapped up and was fastening his teas, the horrid idea of which was a fresh glow of pain arising that instant from the chestnut, seized phytotorias with a sudden panic, and in the first terrifying disorder of the passion it threw him, as it has done the best generals upon earth, quite of his guard. The effect of which was of these, that he leapt incontinentally up, uttering at a rose that interjection of surprise, so much it discounted upon, with he a posiopeistic break after it, mugged thus, as zounds, which, though not strictly canonical, were still as little as a man could have said upon the occasion, and which might by, was a canonical or not, phytotorias could no more help than he could to cause of it. Thoses has taken up some time in the narrative. It took up little more time in the transaction, than just to allow time for phytotorias to draw force to chestnut, and throw it down with violence upon the floor, and for Yorick to rise from his chair, and picked chestnut up. It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind. What incredible weight they have in forming and governing our opinions, both of men and things, that trifles, light as air, shall waft to believe into the soul, and planted so immovably within it, that Euclid's demonstrations, could say be brought to batter it in breach, should not all have power to overthrow it. Yorick, I said, picked up the chestnut which phytotorias's rest had flung down. The action was trifling. I am ashamed to counter it. He did it for no reason, but that he thought a chestnut not a yacht worse for the adventure, and that he held a good chestnut worse dooping for. For this incident, trifling as it was, roared differently in phytotorias's head. He considered this act of Yorick's in getting off his chair and picking up the chestnut, as a plain acknowledgement in him, that the chestnut was originally his, and in course, that it must have been the owner of the chestnut, and no one else who could have played him such a prank was it. What greatly confirmed to him this opinion was this, that a table being parallelogrammical, and very narrow, it afforded a fair opportunity for Yorick, who said directly over-against phytotorias, of slipping the chestnut in, and consequently, that he did it. The look of something more than suspicion, which phytotorias cast full upon Yorick, as these thought arose, too evidently spoke his opinion, and as phytotorias was naturally supposed to know more of the matter than any person besides, his opinion at once became the general one, and for a reason very different from any which have been yet given, in a lesser time it was put out of all manner of dispute. When great or unexpected events fall out upon the stage of this sublunary world, the mind of man, which is an inquisitive kind of a substance, naturally takes a flight behind the scenes to see what is the cause and first spring of them. The search was not long in this instance. It was well known that Yorick had never a good opinion of treaties, which phytotorias had wrote the Concubines, written Andes, as a thing which he feared had done hurt in the world, and was easily found out that there was a mystical meaning in Yorick's sprang, and that is striking the chestnut-hot and phytotorias' blank, was a sarcastic of Fling at his book, the doctrines of which, they said, had uplinked many an honest man in the same place. This conceit awakened some of the lentes, made Agolesti's smile, and if you can recollect the precise look and air of a man's face and tendon finding out riddle, it threw gasophiasis into that form, and in short, was adored by many to be a master-stroke of arch-wit. This, as Dorida has seen from one end to the other, was as grand-bliss as a dream's a philosophy. Yorick, no doubt, a Shakespeare's set of his ancestor, was a man of jest, but it was tempered with something which whistled him from that, and many other ingratious pranks of which he as undeservedly bore the blame, but it was his misfortune all his life long to bear the imputation of saying and doing a thousand things, of which, unless my esteem blinds me, his nature was incapable. All I blame him for, or rather, all I blame and alternately like him for, was that singularity of his temper, which would never suffer him to take pains to set a story right with the world, however in his power. In every ill usage of that sword, he acted precisely as in the affair of his lean horse. He could have explained it to his honor, but his spirit was above it, and besides, he ever looked upon the inventor, the propagator and believer of an illiberal reporter like so injurious to him. He could not stoop to tell his storitism, and so trusted to time and truth to do it for him. This year, a cast produced him inconveniences in many respects. In the present, it was followed by the fixed resentment of Rotatarius, who, as Yorick had just made an end of his destiny, rose up from this chair a second time, to let him know it, which indeed he did with a smile, saying only that he would endeavor not to forget the obligation. But he must mark and carefully separate and distinguish these two things in your mind. The smile was for the company, the threat was for Yorick, and love chapter 61 to 62. Chapters 63 to 65 of Justum Shandy, Volume 2. This is LibriVox according. All LibriVox accordings are under public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Julie Formoller-Yam. The Life and Opinions of Justum Shandy, Gentlemen. Volume 2 by Lauren Stern. Chapter 63. Can you tell me, course, Futitorius, speaking to Gastroferius, who said next to him, for one who would not apply to surgeon and so full of chauffeur, can you tell me, Gastroferius, what is best to take out the fire? Ask Eugenius, said Gastroferius. That greatly depends, said Eugenius, pretending ignorant of the adventure, upon the nature of the part. If it is a tender part, and a part which can conveniently be wrapped up, does both the one and the other, replied Futitorius, laying his hand as he spoke, with an emphatical nod of his head, upon the part in question, and lifting up his right leg at the same time to ease and ventilate it. If that is the case, said Eugenius, I would advise you, Futitorius, not to temper with it by any means, but if you will send to his next printer, and trust your cure to such a simple thing as a soft sheet of paper, just come off the press, you need do nothing more, than twist it round. The damp paper, crossed the oaric, was said next to his friend Eugenius, though I know it has a refreshing coolness in it, yet I presume there's no more than a vehicle, and that the oil and land-black with which the paper is so strongly impregnated does to business. Right, said Eugenius, and is, of any outward application I would venture to recommend, the most anodyne and safe. Was it in my case, said Gastroferius, as the main thing is the oil and land-black, I should spread some sick upon a rag and clap it on directly. That would make a very devil of it, replied Eugenius, and besides, added Eugenius, it would not answer the intention, which is the extreme neatness and elegance of the prescription, which the faculty hall, to be half and half, will consider, if the type is said very small one, which it should be, the sanative particles, which come into contact in this form, have the advantage of being stretched so infinitely thin and with such a mathematical equality, fresh paragraphs and large capitals accepted, as no art or management of the spatula can come up to. It falls out very luckily, replied Eugenius, that a second edition of my treatise, The Concubines Ritinandes, is at this instant in the press. You may take an leaf of it, said Eugenius, no matter which, provided, quoth Eurig, there is no boundary in it. They are just now, replied Fiducius, printing of the ninth chapter, which is the last chapter between one and the book. Pray, what is the title of that chapter? said Eurig, making respectful bow to Fiducius, as he spoke. I think, answered Fiducius, it is that of the Re concubinaria. For heaven's sake, keep out of that chapter, quoth Eurig, my own means, added Eugenius. Now, quoth Didius, rising up, and laying his right hand with his fingers spread upon his breast, had such a blunder about a Christian name happened before the Reformation, it happened the day before yesterday, quoth my uncle Toby to himself. And when baptism was administered in Latin, it was all in English, said my uncle. Many things might have coincided with it, and upon the authority of a sundry decreed cases, to have pronounced the baptism null with the power of giving the child a new name. Had a priest, for instance, which was no uncommon thing, through ignorance of the Latin tongue, baptised the child of Thomas Stiles, in no many partarii and filia at spiritum sanctus, the baptism was held null. I beg your pardon, replied Caesarsius. In that case, as the mistake was only the terminations, the baptism was valid, and to have renown it null, the blood of a priest should have fallen upon the first syllable of each noun, and not as in your case upon the last. My father delighted in subtleties of this kind, and listened with infinite attention. Gestiferus, for example, continued Caesarsius, baptises a child of John Strattling's in go many guardries, etc., etc., instead of in no many partaries, etc. Is this a baptism? No, say the aimless canonists, in as much as radix of each word is hereby torn up, and the sendent meaning of them removed and changed quite to another object. For go many does not signify a name, nor guardries a father. What do they signify, said Mancottobi? Nothing at all, course Yorick. I go, such a baptism is null, said Caesarsius. In cause, asked Yorick, in a term two parts jest and one part earnest. But in the case cited, continued Caesarsius, where paturi is put for patris, filia for filii, etc., as it is a fault only in the declension and the root of the words continue untouched, the afflictions of their branches, either this way or that, does not in any sort hinder the baptism, in as much as the same sense continues in the words as before. But then, said Didius, the intention of the priest pronouncing them grammatically must have been proved to have gone along with it. Right! asked Caesarsius. And of this, brought, said Didius, we have an instance, in a decree of the decretals of Pope Leo III. But my brother's child, cried to Mancottobi, has nothing to do with the Pope. It is a plain child of a Protestant gentleman, Christian Drestrum, against the wells and wishes both of his father and mother, and all were akin to it. If the wells and wishes, said Caesarsius, interrupting Mancottobi, of those only who stand related to Mr. Shandy's child, were to have weight in this matter, Mr. Shandy of all people has elisted to earn it. My uncle Tobi laid down his pipe, and my father drew his chair still closer to the table, to hear the conclusion of so strange an introduction. It has not only been a question, Captain Shandy, amongst the, Didius Wensburn on Testaments, Part 7, paragraph 8, best lawyers and civilians in this land, continued Caesarsius, whether the mother be of akin to her child. But, after much dispassionate inquiry and jactitation of the argument on all sides, it has been adjudged for as a negative, namely, that a mother is not of akin to her child. If you did, broke a bridge, did administer number 47. My father instantly clapped his hand upon Mancottobi's mouth, and a colour of whispering in his ear. The truth was, it was alarmed for Lillia Buliero, and having a great desire to hear more of so curious an argument, he backed to Mancottobi for, for heaven's sake, not a disappointing in it. Mancottobi gave not, resumed his pipe, and, contenting himself with whistling Lillia Buliero inwardly, Caesarsius, Didius and Treptolimus went on with the discourse as follows. And this determination, continued Caesarsius, how contrary so ever it may seem to run the stream of vulgar ideas, it has arisen strongly on its side, and has been put out of all men of dispute from the famous Caes, known commonly by the name of the Duke of Sophox-Case. He decided and broke, said Treptolimus, and taken notice of by Lord Koch, added Didius, and you may find it in Twinburn on Testaments, said Caesarsius. The case, Mr. Shanley, was this. In the reign of Edward the Sixth, Charles Duke of Sophoc, having issue a son by one ventre and a daughter by another ventre, made his last will wherein he devised goods to his son and died, after whose death the son died also, but without will, without wife, and without child, his mother and his sister by the father's side, for she was born of the former ventre, then living. The mother took the administration of his son's goods, according to the Statue of the Twenty-First of Harry VIII, whereby it is enacted, that in case any person die in testate at the administration of his goods, shall be committed to the next of kin. The administration being thus, treptitiously, granted to the mother, the sister by the father's side commenced a suit before the ecclesiastical judge, alleging, first, that she herself was next of kin, and secondly, that a mother was not of kin at all to the party deceased, and therefore prey to court, and that at the administration granted to the mother might be revoked, and be committed unto her as next of kin to the deceased by force of deceptive statute. Here upon, as it was a great cause, and much depending upon its issue, and many causes of great property likely to be decided in times to come, by the precedent to be then made, the most learned, as well in the laws of this realm, as in the civil law, were consulted together, whether the mother was of kin to her son, or no. Brow round to not only the temporal lawyers, but to church lawyers, the jurors' consultee, the jurors' prudentes, the civilians, the advocates, the commissaries, the judges of the consistory, and prerocative courts of Canterbury and York, with the master of the faculties, were all unanimously of opinion, that the mother was not of, no matter, no nominator inter contanguineos, belled in old C. D. Burr Signific, kin to her child. And what said the duchess of Suffolk to it? said Michael Toby. The unexpectedness of Michael Toby's question confounded Cancelesius more than the ablest advocate. He stopped a full minute, looking at my Uncle Toby's face without replying, and in that single minute, Treptolimas put by him and took the lead as follows. Tis a ground and principle in the law, said Treptolimas, that things do not ascend but descend in it, and I make no doubt this was his cause, that, however true it is, that a child may be of the blood and seed of its parents, that the parents nevertheless are not of the blood and seed of it, inasmuch as the parents are not begot by the child, but child by the parents. For so they write, Liberi sunt disengrini padris et madris, sed padir et madir non sunt disengrini liberorum. But this Treptolimas, cried Titius, proves too much. But from this authority cited it would follow not only what indeed is granted on all sides, that a mother is not of kind to her child, but to father likewise. It is held, said Treptolimas, the better opinion, because to father, the mother and child, so they be three persons, yet are they bad, una caro, Evidi, Brooke, Abrich, Titius, Ministers, number 47, one flesh, and consequently no degree of kindred, or any method of acquiring one in nature. There you push the argument again too far, cried Titius, for there is no prohibition in nature, though there is in the Levitical law, but that a man may be get a child upon his grandmother, in which case, opposing the issue of a daughter, she would stand in relation both of. But who, of his thought, cried Casasius, of laying with his grandmother? The young gentleman, replied Euric, whom Seldon speaks of, of whom not only thought of it, but justified his intentions to his father by the argument drawn from the law of retaliation. You later, with my mother, said the lad, why may I not lay with yours? To the argumentum commoni, added Euric. Does is good, replied Eugenius, taking down his head, as they deserve. The company broke up. Chapter 65 And Bray, said my Gotobi, leaning upon Euric, as he and my father were helping him leisurely down the stairs. Don't be terrified, madam. This day-case conversation is not along as last. And Bray, Euric, said my Gotobi, which way is it this set of fairest instrument lengths is settled by these learned men? Very satisfactorily, replied Euric. No mortal, sir, has any concern with it. For Mrs. Shandy, the mother, is noting at all akin to him, and as a mother's, it is sure as side. Mrs. Shandy, in cause, is still less than nothing. In short, he is not as much akin to him, sir, as I am. That may well be, said my father, shaking his head. Let the learned say what they will. There must certainly, course, my Gotobi, have been some sort of consanguinity betwixt the Duchess of Suffolk and his son. The vulgar are of the same opinion, Quasi-Euric, to this hour. End of chapters 63 to 65. Chapters 66 to 67 of just of Shandy, volume 2. 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 Shuliva Malyam. The Life and Opinions of Dritram Shandy, gentlemen, volume 2 by Lauren Stern. Chapter 66 Though my father was hugely tickled with the subtleties of these learned discourses, to still but like the anointing of a broken bone, the moment he got home, the weight of his afflictions returned upon him, but so much the heavier, as is ever the case when the stuff we lean on slips from under us. He became pensive, walked frequently forced to the fish pond, led down one loop of his head, sighed often, for bore to snap, and as a hazy sparks of temper which occasion snapping, so much his perspiration and digestion, as Hippocrates tells us, he had certainly fallen ill with the extinction of them, had not his thoughts been critically drawn of, and his health rescued by fresh drain of disquietudes left him, was a legacy of a thousand pounds by my aunt, Dinah. My father had scarce read the letter, when taking the thing by the right end, he instantly began to plague and puzzle his head, how to lay it out mostly to the honour of his family. A hundred and fifty odd projects took possession of his brains by turns. He would do this, and that, and other. He would go to Rome. He would go to law. He would buy stock. He would buy John Hobson's farm. He would new full front at his house, and add a new wing to make it even. There was a fine water mill on this side, and he would build a windmill on the other side of the river in full view to answer it. But above all things in the world, he would enclose a great oxmoor, and sent out my brother Bobby immediately upon his travels. But as the sun was finite, and consequently could not do everything, and in truth very few of these to any purpose, of all the projects which offered themselves upon this occasion, and the two last seemed to make the deepest impression, and he would infallibly have determined upon both at once, but for the small inconvenience hinted at above, which absolutely put him under a necessity of deciding in favour either of the one or the other. Does not altogether so easy to be done, for though it is certain my father had long before set his heart upon this necessary part of my brother's education, and like a prudent man had actually determined to carry it into execution, was the first money that returned from the second creation of actions in the Mississippi scheme, in which he was an adventurer. Yet the oxmoor, which was a fine large, winny, unrained, unimproved common belonging to the Shandy estate, had almost as all to claim upon him. He had long and effectually set his heart upon turning it likewise to some account. But having never hitherto been breast with such a conjecture of things, as made it necessary to settle either the priority or the justice of their claims, like a wise man he had refrained entering into any need or critical examination about them, so that upon the dismission of every project at this crisis, the two old projects—the oxmoor and my brother—divided him again, and so equal a match was there for each other, as to become the occasion of no small contest in the old gentleman's mind, which of the two should be set again first. People may laugh, as if they will, but a case was at this. It had ever been the custom of the family, and by lengths of time was almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of it should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts before marriage, not only for the sake of battering his own private parts by the benefit of exercise and change of so much air, but simply for the mere delectation of his fancy, by the feather put into his cap of having been abroad. Tantum vaude, my father would say, quantum saunard. Now, as this was a reasonable, and in cause the most Christian indulgence, to deprive him of it, without why or wherefore, and thereby making an example of him, as a first chandy unwild about Europe in opposed chairs, and only because it was a heavy lad, would be using him ten times worse than a Turk. On the other hand, the case of the oxmoor was full as hard. Exclusive of the original purchase money, which was eight hundred pounds, it had cost the family eight hundred pounds more in the lawsuit about fifteen years before, besides the Lord knows, what trouble and vexation. It had been moreover in possession of the chandy family, ever since the middle of the last century, and though it lay full in view before the house, bounded on one extremity by the watermill, and on the other by the projected windmill spoken of above, and for all these reasons, seemed to have the fairest title of any part of the estate to the care and protection of the family, yet by an unaccountable fatality, common to men, as well as the grant they tread on, it has all along most shamefully been overlooked, and to speak the truth of it, had suffered so much by it, that it would have been made any man's heart have bled, Obediah said, who understood the value of the land, to have rode over it, and only seen the condition it was in. However, as neither the purchasing distract of ground, or indeed the placing of it, where it lay, where either of them, properly speaking, of my father's doing, he had never sought himself any way concerned in the affair, till the fifteen years before, when the breaking out of that cursed lawsuit mentioned above, and which had arose about its boundaries, which being altogether my father's own act and deed, it naturally awakened every other argument in its favour, and upon summing some more luck together, he saw, not merely in interest, but in honour, he was bound to do something for it, and that now, all never, was a time. I think there must certainly have been a mixture of ill luck in it, but the reasons on both sides should happen to be so equally balanced by each other. For though my father weighed some in all humours and conditions, spent many an anxious hour in the most profound and abstracted meditation upon what was best to be done, reading books of farming one day, books of travels another, laying aside all passion whatever, viewing the arguments on both sides in all their lights and circumstances, communing every day with my Uncle Toby, arguing with Yorick, and talking over the whole affair of the York small with Obadiah, yet nothing in all their time appeared so strongly on behalf of the one, which was not either strictly applicable to the other, or at least so far can't be balanced by some consideration of equal weight, as to keep the skills even. For to be sure, with proper helps in the hands of some people, so the York small would undoubtedly have made a different appearance in the world from what it did, or ever could do in the condition it lay. Yet every title of this was true with regard to my brother Bobby, let Obadiah say what he would. In point of interest, the contest I own at first sight did not appear so indecisive between some, for whenever my father took pen and ink in hand, and set about calculating the simple expense of pairing and burning, and fencing in the York small, etc., etc., with a certain profit it would bring him in return. The latter turned out so prodigiously in his way of working the count, that he would have sworn the York small would have carried all before it. For it was plain, he should reap a hundred lasts of rape, a twenty per hounds at last, the very first year, besides an excellent crop of wheat, the year following, and the year after that, to speak with him bound, a hundred, but in all likelihood a hundred and fifty, if not two hundred quarters of peas and beans, besides potatoes without end. But then, to think he was all this while breeding upon my brother, like a hawk to eat some, knocked all on the head again, and generally left the old gentleman in such a state of suspense, that as he often declared to my Uncle Toby, he knew no more than his heels what to do. Nobody, but he who has belted, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man's mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time, for to say nothing of the hawk, which by a certain consequence is avoidably made by it all over the finer system of the nerves, which, you know, conveys the animal spirit, and more subtle juices from the heart, whose head, and so on. It is not to be told, and what a degree of such a wayward kind of friction works upon the more gross and solid parts, wasting the fat and impairing the strengths of a man every time, as it goes backwards and forwards. My father had certainly sunk under this evil, as certainly, as he has done and is out of my Christian name, had he not been rescued out of it, as he was out of that, by fresh evil, the misfortune of my brother Bobby's death? What is the life of man? Is it not a shift from side to side, from sorrow to sorrow, to button up one cause of vexation, and unbutton another? Chapter 67 From this moment I am to be considered as heir apparent to the Shani family, and it is from this point properly that a story of my life and my opinion sets out. Is all my hurry and precipitation, I have been but clearing the ground to raise the building, and such a building do I foresee it will turn out, as never was planned, and as never was executed since Adam? In less than five minutes I shall have thrown my pen into the fire, and the little drop of sick ink, which is left remaining at the bottom of my ink-horn, after it. I have but half a score seems to do in the time. I have a thing to name, a thing to lament, a thing to hope, a thing to promise, and a thing to threaten. I have a thing to suppose, a thing to declare, a thing to conceal, a thing to choose, and a thing to pray for. This chapter, therefore, I name the chapter of things, and my next chapter to it, that is, the first chapter of my next volume, if I live, shall be my chapter upon whiskers, in order to keep up some sort of connection in my works. The thing I lament is, that things have crowded and so sick upon me, that I have not been able to get into that part of my work, toward which I have all the way looked forwards, with so much earnest desire, and that is a campaigns, but especially the amours of my Uncle Toby, the events of which are of so singular a nature, and so seventic a cast, that if I can so manage it, as to convey but the same impressions to every other brain, which the occurrences themselves excite in my own, I will answer for it, the book shall make its way into the world, much better than its master has done before it. O Tristram, Tristram, can this, but be once brought about, the credit, which will attempt thee as an author, shall count a balance, that many evils will have befallen thee as a man, thou wilt feast upon the one, when thou hast lost all sense and remembrances of the other. No wonder I itch so much as I do, to get that these amours, they are the choicest morsel of my whole story, and when I do get at them, assure yourselves good folks, nor do I value whose quymish stomach takes offense at it, I shall not be at all knight in the choice of my words, and that's the thing I have to declare. I shall never get all through in five minutes, that I fear, and a thing I hope is that your worships and reverences are not offended. If you are, depend upon it, I'll give you something, my good gentry, next year to be offended at, that's my dear Jenny's way, but who my Jenny is, and which is a ride, and which the wrong end of a woman, is the thing to be concealed, it shall be told you in the next chapter but one to my chapter of buttonholes, and not one chapter before. And now, that you have just got to the end of these, according to the preceding editions, three volumes, the thing I have to ask is, how you feel your hands? My own aches dismally, as for your healths, I know they are much better. Druishandism, think what your will against it, opens the heart and lungs, and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely through its channels, makes the wheel of life run long and cheerfully round. Was I left, like Sancho Pankar, to choose my kingdom, it should not be maritime, or a kingdom of blacks to make a penny of. No, it should be a kingdom of hearty laughing subjects, and as a billiard's and more setonine passions, by creating disorders in the blood and humours, have as bad an ambience I see upon the body politic as body-natural, and as nothing but a habit of virtue can fully govern those passions and subject them to reason, I should add to my prayer that God would give my subjects grace to be as wise as if they were merry. And then, should I be the happiest monarch, and they are the happiest people under heaven? And so, with this moral for the present, may it please your worships and your reverences, I take my leave of you till this time twelve months, when, unless it is a vile cuff kills me in the meantime, I'll have another plug at your beards, and lay open a story to the world you little dream of. End of the second volume End of chapters 66 to 67 End of The Life and Opinions of District Sandy, Gentlemen, Volume 2 by Lauren Stern