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

my uncle Toby, rising up, from the side of the bed, with one shoe off:⁠⸺⁠An’ please your honour, said the corporal, he will never march but to his grave:⁠⸺⁠He shall march, cried my uncle Toby, marching the foot which had a 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, blush’d as he gave it in;⁠—and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out forever.

IX

⸺⁠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.

X The Story of Le Fever Continued

The sun looked bright the morning after, to every eye in the village but Le Fever’s and his afflicted son’s; the hand of death press’d heavy upon his eyelids,⁠⸺⁠and hardly could the wheel at the cistern turn round its circle,⁠—when my uncle Toby, who had rose up an hour before his wonted time, entered the lieutenant’s room, and without preface or apology, sat 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 enquiries, 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, Le Fever, said my uncle Toby, to my house,⁠—and we’ll send for a doctor to see what’s the matter,⁠—and we’ll have an apothecary,⁠—and the corporal shall be your nurse;⁠⸺⁠and I’ll be your servant, Le Fever.

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, superadded, 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 coat, and was pulling it towards him.⁠⸺⁠The blood and spirits of Le Fever, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart⁠—rallied back,⁠—the film forsook his eyes for a moment,⁠—he looked up wishfully in my uncle Toby’s face,⁠—then cast a look upon his boy,⁠⸺⁠and that ligament, fine as it was,⁠—was never broken.⁠⸻

Nature instantly ebb’d again,⁠—the film returned to its place,⁠⸺⁠the pulse fluttered⁠⸺⁠stopp’d⁠⸺⁠went on⁠⸺⁠throbb’d⁠⸺⁠stopp’d again⁠⸺⁠moved⁠⸺⁠stopp’d⁠⸺⁠shall I go on?⁠⸺⁠No.

XI

I am so impatient to return to my own story, that what remains of young Le Fever’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 Le Fever in his hand, attended the poor lieutenant, as chief mourners, to his grave.

That the governor of Dendermond paid his obsequies all military honours,⁠—and that Yorick, not to be behindhand⁠—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 wont to add some short comment or 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 water-landish knowledge in it,⁠—but ’tis 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?

⸺⁠N.B. 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 have stolen the greatest part of it. Doctor Paidagunes 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 upon a couple Moderato; by which, as far as one may gather from Altieri’s Italian dictionary,⁠—but mostly from the authority of a piece of green whipcord, which seemed to have been the unravelling of Yorick’s whiplash, with which he has left us the two sermons marked Moderato, 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 moderato’s are five times better than the so, so’s;⁠—show ten times more knowledge of the human heart;⁠—have seventy times more wit and spirit in them;⁠—(and, to rise properly 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, whene’er Yorick’s dramatic sermons are offered to the world, though I shall admit but