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

ride with it slung across his body: so undoing the bowknot, to lengthen the strings for him, without any more ado, she helped him on with it. However, as this, in some measure, unguarded the mouth of the bag, lest anything should bolt out in galloping back, at the speed Obadiah threatened, they consulted to take it off again: and in the great care and caution of their hearts, they had taken the two strings and tied them close (pursing up the mouth of the bag first) with half a dozen hard knots, each of which Obadiah, to make all safe, had twitched and drawn together with all the strength of his body.

This answered all that Obadiah and the maid intended; but was no remedy against some evils which neither he or she foresaw. The instruments, it seems, as tight as the bag was tied above, had so much room to play in it, towards the bottom (the shape of the bag being conical) that Obadiah could not make a trot of it, but with such a terrible jingle, what with the tire tête, forceps, and squirt, as would have been enough, had Hymen been taking a jaunt that way, to have frightened him out of the country; but when Obadiah accelerated his motion, and from a plain trot assayed to prick his coach-horse into a full gallop⁠⸺⁠by Heaven! Sir, the jingle was incredible.

As Obadiah had a wife and three children⁠⸺⁠the turpitude of fornication, and the many other political ill consequences of this jingling, never once entered his brain,⁠⸺⁠he had however his objection, which came home to himself, and weighed with him, as it has ofttimes done with the greatest patriots.⁠⸺“The poor fellow, Sir, was not able to hear himself whistle.”

VIII

As Obadiah loved wind-music preferably to all the instrumental music he carried with him,⁠—he very considerately set his imagination to work, to contrive and to invent by what means he should put himself in a condition of enjoying it.

In all distresses (except musical) where small cords are wanted, nothing is so apt to enter a man’s head as his hatband:⁠⸺⁠the philosophy of this is so near the surface⁠⸺⁠I scorn to enter into it.

As Obadiah’s was a mix’d case⁠⸺⁠mark, Sirs,⁠⸺⁠I say, a mixed case; for it was obstetrical,⁠⸺⁠scriptical, squirtical, papistical⁠⸺⁠and as far as the coach-horse was concerned in it,⁠⸺⁠caballistical⁠⸺⁠and only partly musical;⁠—Obadiah made no scruple of availing himself of the first expedient which offered; so taking hold of the bag and instruments, and griping them hard together with one hand, and with the finger and thumb of the other putting the end of the hatband betwixt his teeth, and then slipping his hand down to the middle of it,⁠—he tied and cross-tied them all fast together from one end to the other (as you would cord a trunk) with such a multiplicity of roundabouts and intricate cross turns, with a hard knot at every intersection or point where the strings met,⁠—that Dr. Slop must have had three-fifths of Job’s patience at least to have unloosed them.⁠—I think in my conscience, that had Nature been in one of her nimble moods, and in humour for such a contest⁠⸺⁠and she and Dr. Slop both fairly started together⁠⸺⁠there is no man living who had seen the bag with all that Obadiah had done to it,⁠⸺⁠and known likewise the great speed the Goddess can make when she thinks proper, who would have had the least doubt remaining in his mind⁠—which of the two would have carried off the prize. My mother, Madam, had been delivered sooner than the green bag infallibly⁠⸺⁠at least by twenty knots.⁠⸺⁠Sport of small accidents, Tristram Shandy! that thou art, and ever will be! had that trial been for thee, and it was fifty to one but it had,⁠⸺⁠thy affairs had not been so depress’d⁠—(at least by the depression of thy nose) as they have been; nor had the fortunes of thy house and the occasions of making them, which have so often presented themselves in the course of thy life, to thee, been so often, so vexatiously, so tamely, so irrecoverably abandoned⁠—as thou hast been forced to leave them;⁠⸺⁠but ’tis over,⁠⸺⁠all but the account of ’em, which cannot be given to the curious till I am got out into the world.

IX

Great wits jump: for the moment Dr. Slop cast his eyes upon his bag (which he had not done till the dispute with my uncle Toby about midwifery put him in mind of it)⁠—the very same thought occurred.⁠—’Tis God’s mercy, quoth he (to himself) that Mrs. Shandy has had so bad a time of it,⁠⸺⁠else she might have been brought to bed seven times told, before one half of these knots could have got untied.⁠⸺⁠But here you must distinguish⁠—the thought floated only in Dr. Slop’s mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swimming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man’s understanding, without being carried backwards or forwards, till some little gusts of passion or interest drive them to one side.

A sudden trampling in the room above, near my mother’s bed, did the proposition the very service I am speaking of. By all that’s unfortunate, quoth Dr. Slop, unless I make haste, the thing will actually befall me as it is.

X

In the case of knots,⁠—by which, in the first place, I would not be understood to mean slipknots⁠—because in the course of my life and opinions⁠—my opinions concerning them will come in more properly when I mention the catastrophe of my great uncle Mr. Hammond Shandy,⁠—a little man,⁠—but of high fancy:⁠—he rushed into the duke of Monmouth’s affair:⁠⸺⁠nor, secondly, in this place, do I mean that particular species of knots called bowknots;⁠—there is so little address, or skill, or patience required in the unloosing them, that they are below my giving any opinion at all about them.⁠—But by the knots I am speaking of, may it please your reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, devilish tight, hard