The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (pdf e book reader txt) 📕

uncle Toby, (repeating his wish for Dr. Slop a second time, and with a degree of more zeal and earnestness in his manner of wishing, than he had wished at first6)⁠⸺“I wish, Dr. Slop,” quoth my uncle Toby, “you had seen what prodigious armies we had in Flanders.”

My uncle Toby’s wish did Dr. Slop a disservice which his heart never intended any man,⁠—Sir, it confounded him⁠⸺⁠and thereby putting his ideas first into confusion, and then to flight, he could not rally them again for the soul of him.

In all disputes,⁠⸺⁠male or female,⁠⸺⁠whether for honour, for profit, or for love,⁠—it makes no difference in the case;⁠—nothing is more dangerous, Madam, than a wish coming sideways in this unexpected manner upon a man: the safest way in general to take off the force of the wish, is for the party wish’d at, instantly to get upon his legs⁠—and wish the wisher something in return, of pretty near the same value,⁠⸺⁠so balancing the account upon the spot, you stand as you were⁠—nay sometimes gain the advantage of the attack by it.

This will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter of wishes.⁠—

Dr. Slop did not understand the nature of this defence;⁠—he was puzzled with it, and it put an entire stop to the dispute for four minutes and a half;⁠—five had been fatal to it:⁠—my father saw the danger⁠—the dispute was one of the most interesting disputes in the world, “Whether the child of his prayers and endeavours should be born without a head or with one:”⁠—he waited to the last moment, to allow Dr. Slop, in whose behalf the wish was made, his right of returning it; but perceiving, I say, that he was confounded, and continued looking with that perplexed vacuity of eye which puzzled souls generally stare with⁠—first in my uncle Toby’s face⁠—then in his⁠—then up⁠—then down⁠—then east⁠—east and by east, and so on,⁠⸺⁠coasting it along by the plinth of the wainscot till he had got to the opposite point of the compass,⁠⸺⁠and that he had actually begun to count the brass nails upon the arm of his chair,⁠—my father thought there was no time to be lost with my uncle Toby, so took up the discourse as follows.

II

“⁠—What prodigious armies you had in Flanders!”⁠⸺⁠

Brother Toby, replied my father, taking his wig from off his head with his right hand, and with his left pulling out a striped India handkerchief from his right coat pocket, in order to rub his head, as he argued the point with my uncle Toby.⁠⸺⁠

⸺⁠Now, in this I think my father was much to blame; and I will give you my reasons for it.

Matters of no more seeming consequence in themselves than, “Whether my father should have taken off his wig with his right hand or with his left,”⁠⸺⁠have divided the greatest kingdoms, and made the crowns of the monarchs who governed them, to totter upon their heads.⁠⸺⁠But need I tell you, Sir, that the circumstances with which everything in this world is begirt, give everything in this world its size and shape!⁠—and by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to be, what it is⁠—great⁠—little⁠—good⁠—bad⁠—indifferent or not indifferent, just as the case happens?

As my father’s India handkerchief was in his right coat pocket, he should by no means have suffered his right hand to have got engaged: on the contrary, instead of taking off his wig with it, as he did, he ought to have committed that entirely to the left; and then, when the natural exigency my father was under of rubbing his head, called out for his handkerchief, he would have had nothing in the world to have done, but to have put his right hand into his right coat pocket and taken it out;⁠⸺⁠which he might have done without any violence, or the least ungraceful twist in any one tendon or muscle of his whole body

In this case, (unless, indeed, my father had been resolved to make a fool of himself by holding the wig stiff in his left hand⁠⸺⁠or by making some nonsensical angle or other at his elbow-joint, or armpit)⁠—his whole attitude had been easy⁠—natural⁠—unforced: Reynolds himself, as great and gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he sat.

Now as my father managed this matter,⁠—consider what a devil of a figure my father made of himself.

In the latter end of Queen Anne’s reign, and in the beginning of the reign of King George the first⁠—“Coat pockets were cut very low down in the skirt.”⁠—I need say no more⁠—the father of mischief, had he been hammering at it a month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for one in my father’s situation.

III

It was not an easy matter in any king’s reign (unless you were as lean a subject as myself) to have forced your hand diagonally, quite across your whole body, so as to gain the bottom of your opposite coat pocket.⁠⸺⁠In the year one thousand seven hundred and eighteen, when this happened, it was extremely difficult; so that when my uncle Toby discovered the transverse zig-zaggery of my father’s approaches towards it, it instantly brought into his mind those he had done duty in, before the gate of St. Nicolas;⁠⸺⁠the idea of which drew off his attention so entirely from the subject in debate, that he had got his right hand to the bell to ring up Trim to go and fetch his map of Namur, and his compasses and sector along with it, to measure the returning angles of the traverses of that attack,⁠—but particularly of that one, where he received his wound upon his groin.

My father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the blood in his body seemed to rush up into his face⁠⸺⁠my uncle Toby dismounted immediately.

⸺⁠I did not apprehend your uncle Toby was o’ horseback.⁠⸻

IV

A man’s body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin’s lining;⁠—rumple