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

to a final determination, and had concerted the whole plan of his and Corporal Trim’s decampment.

My uncle Toby had a little neat country-house of his own, in the village where my father’s estate lay at Shandy, which had been left him by an old uncle, with a small estate of about one hundred pounds a-year. Behind this house, and contiguous to it, was a kitchen-garden of about half an acre; and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off from it by a tall yew hedge, was a bowling-green, containing just about as much ground as Corporal Trim wished for;⁠—so that as Trim uttered the words, “A rood and a half of ground to do what they would with,”⁠—this identical bowling-green instantly presented itself, and became curiously painted all at once, upon the retina of my uncle Toby’s fancy;⁠—which was the physical cause of making him change colour, or at least of heightening his blush, to that immoderate degree I spoke of.

Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more heat and expectation, than my uncle Toby did, to enjoy this selfsame thing in private;⁠—I say in private;⁠—for it was sheltered from the house, as I told you, by a tall yew hedge, and was covered on the other three sides, from mortal sight, by rough holly and thickset flowering shrubs:⁠—so that the idea of not being seen, did not a little contribute to the idea of pleasure preconceived in my uncle Toby’s mind.⁠—Vain thought! however thick it was planted about,⁠⸺⁠or private soever it might seem,⁠—to think, dear uncle Toby, of enjoying a thing which took up a whole rood and a half of ground,⁠⸺⁠and not have it known!

How my uncle Toby and Corporal Trim managed this matter,⁠⸺⁠with the history of their campaigns, which were no way barren of events,⁠⸺⁠may make no uninteresting under-plot in the epitasis and working-up of this drama.⁠—At present the scene must drop,⁠—and change for the parlour fireside.

VI

⸺⁠What can they be doing, brother? said my father.⁠—I think, replied my uncle Toby,⁠—taking, as I told you, his pipe from his mouth, and striking the ashes out of it as he began his sentence;⁠⸺⁠I think, replied he,⁠—it would not be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell.

Pray, what’s all that racket over our heads, Obadiah?⁠⸺⁠quoth my father;⁠⸺⁠my brother and I can scarce hear ourselves speak.

Sir, answered Obadiah, making a bow towards his left shoulder,⁠—my Mistress is taken very badly.⁠—And where’s Susannah running down the garden there, as if they were going to ravish her?⁠⸺⁠Sir, she is running the shortest cut into the town, replied Obadiah, to fetch the old midwife.⁠—Then saddle a horse, quoth my father, and do you go directly for Dr. Slop, the man-midwife, with all our services,⁠⸺⁠and let him know your mistress is fallen into labour⁠⸺⁠and that I desire he will return with you with all speed.

It is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to my uncle Toby, as Obadiah shut the door,⁠⸺⁠as there is so expert an operator as Dr. Slop so near,⁠—that my wife should persist to the very last in this obstinate humour of hers, in trusting the life of my child, who has had one misfortune already, to the ignorance of an old woman;⁠⸺⁠and not only the life of my child, brother,⁠⸺⁠but her own life, and with it the lives of all the children I might, peradventure, have begot out of her hereafter.

Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle Toby, my sister does it to save the expense:⁠—A pudding’s end,⁠—replied my father,⁠⸺⁠the Doctor must be paid the same for inaction as action,⁠⸺⁠if not better,⁠—to keep him in temper.

⸺⁠Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth my uncle Toby, in the simplicity of his heart,⁠—but Modesty.⁠—My sister, I dare say, added he, does not care to let a man come so near her ****. I will not say whether my uncle Toby had completed the sentence or not;⁠⸺’tis for his advantage to suppose he had,⁠⸺⁠as, I think, he could have added no One Word which would have improved it.

If, on the contrary, my uncle Toby had not fully arrived at the period’s end,⁠—then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of my father’s tobacco-pipe for one of the neatest examples of that ornamental figure in oratory, which Rhetoricians stile the Aposiopesis.⁠⸺⁠Just Heaven! how does the Poco piu and the Poco meno of the Italian artists;⁠—the insensible more or less, determine the precise line of beauty in the sentence, as well as in the statute! How do the slight touches of the chisel, the pencil, the pen, the fiddlestick, et cætera,⁠—give the true swell, which gives the true pleasure!⁠—O my countrymen;⁠—be nice;⁠—be cautious of your language;⁠—and never, O! never let it be forgotten upon what small particles your eloquence and your fame depend.

⸺“My sister, mayhap,” quoth my uncle Toby, “does not choose to let a man come so near her ****.” Make this dash,⁠—’tis an Aposiopesis.⁠—Take the dash away, and write Backside,⁠⸺’tis Bawdy.⁠—Scratch Backside out, and put Cover’d way in, ’tis a Metaphor;⁠—and, I dare say, as fortification ran so much in my uncle Toby’s head, that if he had been left to have added one word to the sentence,⁠⸺⁠that word was it.

But whether that was the case or not the case;⁠—or whether the snapping of my father’s tobacco-pipe, so critically, happened through accident or anger, will be seen in due time.

VII

Tho’ my father was a good natural philosopher,⁠—yet he was something of a moral philosopher too; for which reason, when his tobacco-pipe snapp’d short in the middle,⁠—he had nothing to do, as such, but to have taken hold of the two pieces, and thrown them gently upon the back of the fire.⁠⸺⁠He did no such thing;⁠⸺⁠he threw them with all the violence in the world;⁠—and, to give the action still more emphasis,⁠—he started upon both his legs to do it.

This looked something like heat;⁠—and the manner of his reply to what my uncle Toby was saying, proved it was so.

—“Not choose,” quoth my father,