-blow your noses,-cleanse your emunctories, -sneeze, my good people !-God bless you. Now give me all the help you can. CHAPTER XXI. As there are fifty different ends (counting all ends in-as well civil as religious) for which a woman takes a husband, she first sets about and carefully weighs, then separates and distinguishes, in her mind, which of all that number of ends is hers; then, by discourse, inquiry, argumentation, and inference, she investigates and finds out whether she has got hold of the right one; and, if she has, then, by pulling it gently this way and that way, she further forms a judgment whether it will not break in the drawing. The imagery under which Slawkenbergius impresses this upon his reader's fancy, in the beginning of his third Decade, is so ludicrous, that the honour I bear the sex will not suffer me to quote it, otherwise, it is not destitute of humour. She first, saith Slawkenbergius, stops the ass; and, holding his halter in her left hand (lest he should get away), she thrusts her right hand into the very bottom of his pannier to search for it.-For what? . . . You'll not know the sooner, quoth Slawkenbergius, for interrupting me. 'I have nothing, good lady, but empty bottles,' says the ass. ... Whether it is in the choice of the clay,—or that it is frequently spoil'd in the baking (by an excess of which a husband may turn out too crusty, you know, on one hand, or not enough so, through defect of heat, on the other);-or whether this great artificer is not so attentive to the little Platonic exigencies of that part of the species for whose use she is fabricating this ;or that her ladyship sometimes scarce knows what sort of a husband will do,-I know not: we will discourse about it after supper. It is enough that neither the observation itself, nor the reasoning upon it, are at all to the purpose,-but rather against it; since, with regard to my uncle Toby's fitness for the marriage state, nothing was ever better: she had formed him of the best and kindliest clay, had tempered it with her own milk, and breathed into it the sweetest spirit ;-she had made him all gentle, generous, and humane ;-she had filled his heart with trust and confidence, and disposed every passage which led to it for the communication of the tenderest offices;-she had, moreover, considered the other causes for which matrimony was ordained The donation was not defeated by my uncle Toby's wound. Now, this last article was somewhat apocryphal; and the Devil, who is the great disturber of our faiths in this world, had raised scruples in Mrs. Wadman's brain about it; and, like a true devil as he was, had done his own work at the same time, by turning my uncle Toby's virtue thereupon into nothing but empty bottles, tripes, trunkhose, and pantoufles. 'I'm loaded with tripes,' says the second. And thou art little better, quoth she, to the third; for nothing is there in thy panniers but trunk-hose and pantoufles ;-and so to the fourth and fifth, going on, one by one, through the whole string, till, coming to the ass which carries it, she turns the pannier upside down, looks at it-considers it-samples it-measures it-stretches it-wets it-dries it-then takes her teeth both to the warp and weft of it. ... Of what? for the love of Christ! .. I am determined, answered Slawkenber-world that she would get to the bottom of the gius, that all the powers upon earth shall never wring that secret from my breast. CHAPTER XXII. We live in a world beset on all sides with mys- CHAPTER XXIII. MRS. BRIDGET had pawn'd all the little stock of honour a poor chambermaid was worth in the affair in ten days; and it was built upon one of the most concessible postulata in nature, namely, that, whilst my uncle Toby was making love to her mistress, the Corporal could find nothing better to do than to make love to her;-And I'll let him, as much as he will,' said Bridget, 'to get it out of him.' Friendship has two garments, an outer and an under one. Bridget was serving her mistress' interests in the one, and doing the thing which most pleased herself in the other; so had as many stakes depending upon my uncle Toby's Mrs. Wadman wound as the Devil himself. had but one,-and, as it possibly might be her last (without discouraging Mrs. Bridget, or discrediting her talents), was determined to play her cards herself. She wanted not encouragement: a child might 1 have look'd into his hand;-there was such a plainness and simplicity in his playing out what trumps he had,-with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the ten-ace,—and so naked and defenceless did he sit upon the same sofa with Widow Wadman, that a generous heart would have wept to have won the game off him. Let us drop the metaphor. CHAPTER XXIV. -AND the story too, if you please; for though I have all along been hastening towards this part of it, with so much earnest desire, as well knowing it to be the choicest morsel of what I had to offer to the world, yet now that I am got to it, any one is welcome to take my pen and go on with the story for me that will.-I see the difficulties of the descriptions I am going to give -and feel my want of powers. It is one comfort at least to me, that I lost some fourscore ounces of blood this week, in a most uncritical fever which attacked me at the beginning of this chapter; so that I have still some hopes remaining it may be more in the serous or globular parts of the blood than in the subtle aura of the brain.-Be it which it willan Invocation can do no hurt; and I leave the affair entirely to the invoked, to inspire or to inject me according as he sees good. THE INVOCATION. Gentle spirit of sweetest humour, who erst didst sit upon the easy pen of my beloved Cervantes! Thou who glidedst daily through his lattice, and turnedst the twilight of his prison into noonday brightness by thy presence,tingedst his little urn of water with heavensent nectar, and, all the time he wrote of Sancho and his master, didst cast thy mystic mantle o'er his wither'd stump,' and wide extended it to all the evils of his life, -Turn in hither, I beseech thee !-behold these breeches!-they are all I have in the world; that piteous rent was given them at Lyons. My shirts! see what a deadly schism has happen'd amongst 'em; for the laps are in Lombardy, and the rest of 'em here.-I never had but six; and a cunning gipsy of a laundress at Milan cut me off the fore-laps of five. To do her justice, she did it with some consideration; for I was returning out of Italy. And yet, notwithstanding all this, and a pistol tinder-box, which was, moreover, filch'd from me at Sienna, and twice that I paid five Pauls for two hard eggs, once at Raddicoffini, and a second time at Capua,—I do not think a journey through France and Italy, provided a man keeps his temper all the way, so bad a thing as some people would make you believe; there must be 1 He lost his hand at the battle of Lepanto. ups and downs, or how the deuce should we get into valleys where nature spreads so many tables of entertainment?-Tis nonsense to imagine they will lend you their voitures to be shaken to pieces for nothing; and unless you pay twelve sous for greasing your wheels, how should the poor peasant get butter to his bread?—We really expect too much,—and, for the livre or two above par for your supper and bed-at the most they are but one shilling and ninepence halfpennywho would embroil their philosophy for it? For Heaven's and for your own sake pay it,-pay it with both hands open, rather than leave Disappointment sitting drooping upon the eye of your fair hostess and her damsels in the gateway, at your departure;-and besides, my dear sir, you get a sisterly kiss of each of 'em worth a pound at least I did;— -For my uncle Toby's amours running all the way in my head, they had the same effect upon me as if they had been my own.-I was in the most perfect state of bounty and good-will, and felt the kindliest harmony vibrating within me, with every oscillation of the chaise alike; so that, whether the roads were rough or smooth, it made no difference; everything I saw or had to do with touched upon some secret spring, either of sentiment or rapture. -They are the sweetest notes I ever heard; and I instantly let down the fore-glass to hear them more distinctly."Tis Maria, said the postillion, observing I was listening. Poor Maria, continued he (leaning his body on one side to let me see her, for he was in a line betwixt us), is sitting upon a bank playing her vespers upon her pipe, with her little goat beside her. The young fellow uttered this with an accent and a look so perfectly in tune to a feeling heart, that I instantly made a vow I would give him a four-and-twenty sous piece when I got to Moulins. ... -And who is poor Maria? said I. The love and pity of all the villages around us, said the postillion: it is but three years ago that the sun did not shine upon so fair, so quick-witted and amiable a maid; a better fate did Maria deserve than to have her banns forbid by the intrigues of the curate of the parish who published them. He was going on, when Maria, who had made a short pause, put the pipe to her mouth and began the air again ;-they were the same notes, yet were ten times sweeter. It is the evening service to the Virgin, said the young man ; -but who has taught her to play it, or how she came by her pipe, no one knows: we think that Heaven has assisted her in both; for ever since she has been unsettled in her mind, it seems her only consolation; she has never once had the pipe out of her hand, but plays that service upon it almost night and day. The postillion delivered this with so much discretion and natural eloquence, that I could not help deciphering something in his face above his condition, and should have sifted out his history, had not poor Maria's taken full possession of me. We had got up by this time almost to the bank where Maria was sitting: she was in a thin white jacket, with her hair, all but two tresses, drawn up into a silk net, with a few olive leaves twisted a little fantastically on one side ;-she was beautiful; and if ever I felt the full force of an honest heart-ache, it was the moment I saw her. -God help her! poor damsel! Above an hundred masses, said the postillion, have been said in the several parish churches and convents around for her, but without effect: we have still hopes, as she is sensible for short intervals, that the Virgin at last will restore her to herself; but her parents, who know her best, are hopeless upon that score, and think her senses are lost for ever. As the postillion spoke this, Maria made a cadence so melancholy, so tender and querulous, that I sprung out of the chaise to help her, and found myself sitting betwixt her and her goat before I relapsed from my enthusiasm. Maria looked wistfully for some time at me, and then at her goat-and then at me-and then at her goat again, and so on alternately. -Well, Maria, said I, softly, what resemblance do you find? I do entreat the candid reader to believe me, that it was from the humblest conviction of what a beast man is, that I asked the question; and that I would not have let fall an unseasonable pleasantry in the venerable presence of Misery, to be entitled to all the wit that ever Rabelais scattered; and yet I own my heart smote me, and that I so smarted at the very idea of it, that I swore I would set up for Wisdom, and utter grave sentences the rest of my days, and never-never attempt again to commit mirth with man, woman, or child, the longest day I had to live. believe As for writing nonsense to them, there was a reserve; but that I leave to the world. Adieu, Maria!-adieu, poor hapless damsel! -some time, but not now, I may hear thy sorrows from thy own lips. But I was deceived; for that moment she took her pipe and told me such a tale of woe with it, that I rose up, and with broken and irregular steps walked softly to my chaise. -What an excellent inn at Moulins! CHAPTER XXV. WHEN We have got to the end of this chapter (but not before) we must all turn back to the two blank chapters; on the account of which my honour has lain bleeding this half hour.-I stop it, by pulling off one of my yellow slippers, and throwing it, with all my violence, to the opposite side of my room, with a declaration at the heel of it, That whatever resemblance it may bear to half the chapters which are written in the world, or, for aught I know, may be now writing in it, that it was as casual as the foam of Zeuxis' horse; besides, I look upon a chapter which has only nothing in it with respect; and, considering what worse things there are in the world, that it is no way a proper subject for satire. -Why, then, was it left so? And here, without staying for my reply, shall I be called as many blockheads, numskulls, doddypoles, dunderheads, ninnyhammers, goosecaps, joltheads, nincompoops, and sh-t-a-beds,-and other un savoury appellations, as ever the cake-bakers of Lerne cast in the teeth of King Garagantua's shepherds :-and I'll let them do it, as Bridget said, as much as they please; for how was it possible they should foresee the necessity I was under of writing the twenty-fifth chapter of my book before the eighteenth? etc. -So I don't take it amiss; all I wish is, that it may be a lesson to the world to let people tell their stories their own way.' THE EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER. As Mrs. Bridget opened the door before the Corporal had well given the rap, the interval betwixt that and my uncle Toby's introduction into the parlour was so short, that Mrs. Wadman had but just time to get from behind the curtain, lay a Bible upon the table, and advance a step or two towards the door to receive him. My uncle Toby saluted Mrs. Wadman after the manner in which women were saluted by men in the year of our Lord God one thousand seven hundred and thirteen ;-then facing about, he marched up abreast with her to the sofa, and in three plain words-though not before he was sat down-nor after he was sat down-but as he was sitting down, told her he was in love ;' so that my uncle Toby strained himself more in the declaration than he needed. Mrs. Wadman naturally looked down upon a slit she had been darning up in her apron, in expectation every moment that my uncle Toby would go on; but having no talents for amplification, and love, moreover, of all others, being a subject of which he was the least a master,when he had told Mrs. Wadman once that he loved her, he let it alone, and left the matter to work after its own way. My father was always in raptures with this system of my uncle Toby's, as he falsely called it, and would often say, that could his brother Toby to his process have added but a pipe of tobacco,-he had wherewithal to have found his way, if there was faith in a Spanish proverb, towards the hearts of half the women upon the globe. My uncle Toby never understood what my father meant: nor will I presume to extract more from it than a condemnation of an error which the bulk of the world lie under-but the French, every one of 'em to a man, who believe in it almost as much as the real presence, That talking of love is making it.' offer to take them as they were, and share them along with her. When my uncle Toby had said this, he did not care to say it again; so, casting his eye upon the Bible which Mrs. Wadman had laid upon the table, he took it up; and popping, dear soul! upon a passage in it, of all others the -I would as soon set about making a black most interesting to him-which was the siege pudding by the same receipt. Let us go on :-Mrs. Wadman sat in expectation my uncle Toby would do so, to almost the first pulsation of that minute wherein silence on one side or the other generally becomes indecent: so, edging herself a little more towards him, and raising up her eyes, sub-blushing as she did it, she took up the gauntlet-or the discourse (if you like it better), and communed with my uncle Toby thus: The cares and disquietudes of the marriage state, quoth Mrs. Wadman, are very great.. I suppose so, said my uncle Toby. . . . And therefore when a person, continued Mrs. Wadman, is so much at his case as you are,-so happy, Captain Shandy, in yourself, your friends, and your amusements,-I wonder what reasons can incline you to the state! of Jericho-he set himself to read it over,leaving his proposal of marriage, as he had done his declaration of love, to work with her after its own way. Now it wrought neither as an astringent, nor a loosener; nor like opium, nor bark, nor mercury, nor buckthorn, nor any one drug which nature had bestowed upon the world;-in short, it worked not at all in her; and the cause of that was that there was something working there before. -Babbler that I am! and I have anticipated what it was a dozen times; but there is fire still in the subject.— Allons! CHAPTER XXVI. IT is natural for a perfect stranger who is going from London to Edinburgh, to inquire, before . . They are written, quoth my uncle Toby, he sets out, how many miles to York? which in the Common-Prayer Book. is about half-way: nor does any body wonder if he goes on and asks about the corporation, etc. Thus far my uncle Toby went on warily, and kept within his depth, leaving Mrs. Wadman to sail up the gulf as she pleased. ... As for children, said Mrs. Wadman, though a principal end, perhaps, of the institution, and the natural wish, I suppose, of every parent,--yet do not we all find, they are certain sorrows, and very uncertain comforts?-and what is there, dear sir, to pay one for the heartaches-what compensation for the many tender and disquieting apprehensions of a suffering and defenceless mother who brings them into life? .. I declare, said my uncle Toby, smit with pity, I know of none; unless it be the pleasure which has pleased God. . . ... A fiddlestick! quoth she. CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH. Now there is such an infinitude of notes, tunes, cants, chants, airs, looks, and accents with which the word fiddlestick may be pronounced in all such cases as this, every one of 'em impressing a sense and meaning as different from the other as dirt from cleanliness,-that casuists (for it is an affair of conscience on that score) reckon up no less than fourteen thousand, in which you may do either right or wrong. Mrs. Wadman hit upon the fiddlestick which summoned up all my uncle Toby's modest blood into his cheeks;-so, feeling within himself that he had somehow or other got beyond his depth, he stopt short; and, without entering further either into the pains or pleasures of matrimony, he laid his hand upon his heart, and made an It was just as natural for Mrs. Wadman, whose first husband was all his time afflicted with a sciatica, to wish to know how far from the hip to the groin; and how far she was likely to suffer more or less in her feelings, in the one case than in the other. She had, accordingly, read Drake's Anatomy from one end to the other. She had peep'd into Wharton upon the Brain, and borrowed Graaf upon the Bones and Muscles; but could make nothing of it. She had reason'd likewise from her own powers, laid down theorems, - drawn consequences, and come to no conclusion. To clear up all, she had twice asked Doctor Slop, If poor Captain Shandy was ever likely to recover of his wound?' it, in his discourse with Eve; for the propensity -Was it without remission? -Was motion bad for it?' et cætera, were so tenderly spoke to, and so directed towards, my uncle Toby's heart, that every item of them sunk ten times deeper into it than the evils themselves. But when Mrs. Wadman went round about by Namur to get at my uncle Toby's groin; and engaged him to attack the point of the advanced counterscarp, and pêle mêle with the Dutch to take the counterguard of St. Roch sword in hand,-and then, with tender notes playing upon his ear, led him, all bleeding, by the hand out of the trench, wiping her eye as he was carried to his tent,-Heaven! Earth! Sea!-all was lifted up,-the springs of nature rose above their levels,-an angel of mercy sat beside him on the sofa,-his heart glow'd with fire;-and had he been worth a thousand, he had lost every heart of them to Mrs. Wadman. -For nothing can make this chapter go off with spirit but an apostrophe to thee;-but my heart tells me that in such a crisis an apostrophe is but an insult in disguise; and ere I would offer one to a woman in distress-let the chapter go to the Devil; provided any damn'd critic in keeping will be but at the trouble to take it with him. CHAPTER XXVII. My uncle Toby's map is carried down into the kitchen. CHAPTER XXVIII. -AND here is the Maes, and this is the Sambre, said the Corporal, pointing with his right hand extended a little towards the map, and his left upon Mrs. Bridget's shoulder-but not the shoulder next him;-and this, said he, is the town of Namur,-and this the citadel,-and there lay the French,—and here lay his Honour and myself;-and in this cursed trench, Mrs. Bridget, quoth the Corporal, taking her by the hand, did he receive the wound which crush'd him so miserably here.-In pronouncing which, he slightly press'd the back of her hand towards the part he felt for-and let it fall. .. We thought, Mr. Trim, it had been more in the middle, said Mrs. Bridget. ... That would have undone us for ever, said And left my poor mistress undone too, said Bridget. The Corporal made no reply to the repartee, but by giving Mrs. Bridget a kiss. ... Come, come, said Bridget, holding the palm of her left hand parallel to the plane of the horizon, and sliding the fingers of the other over it, in a way which could not have been done had there been the least wart or protube'Tis every syllable of it false, cried rance. -And whereabouts, dear sir, quoth Mrs. Wadman, a little categorically, did you receive the Corporal. this sad blow? . . . In asking this question, Mrs. Wadman gave a slight glance towards the waistband of my uncle Toby's red plush breeches, expecting naturally, as the shortest reply to it, that my uncle Toby would lay his forefinger upon the place.-It fell out otherwise,-for my uncle Toby having got his wound before the gate of St. Nicholas, in one of the traverses of the trench opposite to the salient angle of the demi-bastion of St. Roch, he could at any time stick a pin upon the identical spot of the Corporal, before she had half finished the ground where he was standing when the stone struck him. This struck instantly upon my uncle Toby's sensorium ;-and with it struck his large map of the town and citadel of Namur, and its environs, which he had purchased and pasted down upon a board, by the Corporal's aid, during his long illness :-it had lain, with other military lumber, in the garret ever since; and accordingly the Corporal was detached to the garret to fetch it. My uncle Toby measured off thirty toises, with Mrs. Wadman's scissors, from the returning angle before the gate of St. Nicholas; and with such a virgin modesty laid her finger upon the place, that the goddess of Decency, if then in being-if not, 'twas her shade-shook her head, and, with a finger wavering across her eyes, forbade her to explain the mistake. Unhappy Mrs. Wadman! sentence. I know it to be fact, said Bridget, from credible witnesses. ... Upon my honour, said the Corporal, laying his hand upon his heart, and blushing as he spoke with honest resentment,—'tis a story, Mrs. Bridget, as false as hell. Not, said Bridget, interrupting him, that I or my mistress care a halfpenny about it, whether it is so or no ;-only that when one is married, one would choose to have such a thing by one, at least... It was somewhat unfortunate for Mrs. Bridget that she had begun the attack with her manual exercise; for the Corporal instantly |
