The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Laurence Sterne (short novels to read .txt) 📖

and with reason.⁠⸺⁠Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it,⁠—it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman’s task into another man’s hands.”

“Show me the man, who knows what life is, who dreads it, and I’ll show thee a prisoner who dreads his liberty.”

Is it not better, my dear brother Toby, (for mark⁠—our appetites are but diseases)⁠—is it not better not to hunger at all, than to eat?⁠—not to thirst, than to take physic to cure it?

Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, from love and melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, like a galled traveller, who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his journey afresh?

There is no terrour, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groans and convulsions⁠—and the blowing of noses and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains, in a dying man’s room.⁠—Strip it of these, what is it?⁠—’Tis better in battle than in bed, said my uncle Toby.⁠—Take away its herses, its mutes, and its mourning,⁠—its plumes, scutcheons, and other mechanic aids⁠—What is it?⁠⸺⁠Better in battle! continued my father, smiling, for he had absolutely forgot my brother Bobby⁠—’tis terrible no way⁠—for consider, brother Toby,⁠—when we are⁠—death is not;⁠—and when death is⁠—we are not. My uncle Toby laid down his pipe to consider the proposition; my father’s eloquence was too rapid to stay for any man⁠—away it went,⁠—and hurried my uncle Toby’s ideas along with it.⁠⸺⁠

For this reason, continued my father, ’tis worthy to recollect how little alteration, in great men, the approaches of death have made.⁠—Vespasian died in a jest upon his close-stool⁠—Galba with a sentence⁠—Septimus Severus in a dispatch⁠—Tiberius in dissimulation, and Caesar Augustus in a compliment.⁠—I hope ’twas a sincere one⁠—quoth my uncle Toby.

—’Twas to his wife,⁠—said my father.

IV

⸺⁠And lastly⁠—for all the choice anecdotes which history can produce of this matter, continued my father,⁠—this, like the gilded dome which covers in the fabric⁠—crowns all.⁠—

’Tis of Cornelius Gallus, the prætor⁠—which, I dare say, brother Toby, you have read,⁠—I dare say I have not, replied my uncle.⁠⸺⁠He died, said my father, as ***************⁠—And if it was with his wife, said my uncle Toby⁠—there could be no hurt in it⁠—That’s more than I know⁠—replied my father.

V

My mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the passage which led to the parlour, as my uncle Toby pronounced the word wife.⁠—’Tis a shrill penetrating sound of itself, and Obadiah had helped it by leaving the door a little ajar, so that my mother heard enough of it to imagine herself the subject of the conversation; so laying the edge of her finger across her two lips⁠—holding in her breath, and bending her head a little downwards, with a twist of her neck⁠—(not towards the door, but from it, by which means her ear was brought to the chink)⁠—she listened with all her powers:⁠⸺⁠the listening slave, with the Goddess of Silence at his back, could not have given a finer thought for an intaglio.

In this attitude I am determined to let her stand for five minutes: till I bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as Rapin does those of the church) to the same period.

VI

Though in one sense, our family was certainly a simple machine, as it consisted of a few wheels; yet there was thus much to be said for it, that these wheels were set in motion by so many different springs, and acted one upon the other from such a variety of strange principles and impulses⁠⸺⁠that though it was a simple machine, it had all the honour and advantages of a complex one,⁠⸺⁠and a number of as odd movements within it, as ever were beheld in the inside of a Dutch silk-mill.

Amongst these there was one, I am going to speak of, in which, perhaps, it was not altogether so singular, as in many others; and it was this, that whatever motion, debate, harangue, dialogue, project, or dissertation, was going forwards in the parlour, there was generally another at the same time, and upon the same subject, running parallel along with it in the kitchen.

Now to bring this about, whenever an extraordinary message, or letter, was delivered in the parlour⁠—or a discourse suspended till a servant went out⁠—or the lines of discontent were observed to hang upon the brows of my father or mother⁠—or, in short, when anything was supposed to be upon the tapis worth knowing or listening to, ’twas the rule to leave the door, not absolutely shut, but somewhat ajar⁠—as it stands just now,⁠—which, under covert of the bad hinge (and that possibly might be one of the many reasons why it was never mended), it was not difficult to manage; by which means, in all these cases, a passage was generally left, not indeed as wide as the Dardanelles, but wide enough, for all that, to carry on as much of this windward trade, as was sufficient to save my father the trouble of governing his house;⁠—my mother at this moment stands profiting by it.⁠—Obadiah did the same thing, as soon as he had left the letter upon the table which brought the news of my brother’s death, so that before my father had well got over his surprise, and entered upon this harangue,⁠—had Trim got upon his legs, to speak his sentiments upon the subject.

A curious observer of nature, had he been worth the inventory of all Job’s stock⁠—though by the by, your curious observers are seldom worth a groat⁠—would have given the half of it, to have heard Corporal Trim and my father, two orators so contrasted by nature and education, haranguing over the same bier.

My father⁠—a man of deep reading⁠—prompt memory⁠—with Cato, and Seneca, and Epictetus, at his fingers ends.⁠—

The corporal⁠—with nothing⁠—to remember⁠—of no deeper reading than his muster-roll⁠—or greater names at his fingers end, than the contents of it.

The one proceeding from period to