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

this was as much Arabick to my father, as the rites of the Colchi and Troglodites 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 once.

XXXVIII

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 betwixt 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 toises.⁠—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 selfsame radical heat and radical moisture?

With humble submission to his honour’s better judgment, quoth 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 thong split into a tassel about the knot, he marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism; then touching his under-jaw with the thumb and fingers of his right-hand before he opened his mouth,⁠⸺⁠he delivered his notion thus.

XXXIX

Just as the corporal was humming, to begin⁠—in waddled Dr. Slop.⁠—’Tis not twopence 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 whelp 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 air: the system which Dr. Slop had laid down, to treat the accident by, no way allowed of such a mode of enquiry.⁠—He sat down.

Pray, Sir, quoth my uncle Toby, in a manner which could not go unanswered,⁠—in what condition is the boy?⁠—’Twill end in a phimosis, replied Dr. Slop.

I am no wiser than I was, quoth 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. Slop, and then delivered his opinion concerning radical heat and radical moisture, in the following words.

XL

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, an’ please your honours, 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 fashion, quoth Dr. Slop, 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, an’ 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,⁠—’twas that, and nothing else, which brought on the flux, and which had like to have killed both his honour 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 honour 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, an’ 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, an’ please your honour, 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 vapours⁠—we know not what it is to fear death.

I am at a loss, Captain Shandy, quoth Dr. Slop, to determine in which branch of learning your servant shines most, whether in physiology or divinity.⁠—Slop 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 pass’d muster with great honour.⁠⸺⁠

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