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Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, The, Vol. 3

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<h2>Chapter 3.LXXXI.</h2> To conceive this right,—call for pen and ink—here's paper ready to your hand.—Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind—as like your mistress as you can—as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you—'tis all one to me—please but your own fancy in it. (blank page) —Was ever any thing in Nature so sweet!—so exquisite! —Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle Toby resist it? Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy covers, which Malice will not blacken, and which Ignorance cannot misrepresent. <h2>Chapter 3.LXXXII.</h2> As Susannah was informed by an express from Mrs. Bridget, of my uncle Toby's falling in love with her mistress fifteen days before it happened,—the contents of which express, Susannah communicated to my mother the next day,—it has just given me an opportunity of entering upon my uncle Toby's amours a fortnight before their existence. I have an article of news to tell you, Mr. Shandy, quoth my mother, which will surprise you greatly.— Now my father was then holding one of his second beds of justice, and was musing within himself about the hardships of matrimony, as my mother broke silence.— '—My brother Toby,' quoth she, 'is going to be married to Mrs. Wadman.' —Then he will never, quoth my father, be able to lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives. It was a consuming vexation to my father, that my mother never asked the meaning of a thing she did not understand. —That she is not a woman of science, my father would say—is her misfortune—but she might ask a question.— My mother never did.—In short, she went out of the world at last without knowing whether it turned round, or stood still.—My father had officiously told her above a thousand times which way it was,—but she always forgot. For these reasons, a discourse seldom went on much further betwixt them, than a proposition,—a reply, and a rejoinder; at the end of which, it generally took breath for a few minutes (as in the affair of the breeches), and then went on again. If he marries, 'twill be the worse for us,—quoth my mother. Not a cherry-stone, said my father,—he may as well batter away his means upon that, as any thing else, —To be sure, said my mother: so here ended the proposition—the reply,—and the rejoinder, I told you of. It will be some amusement to him, too,—said my father. A very great one, answered my mother, if he should have children.— —Lord have mercy upon me,—said my father to himself—.... <h2>Chapter 3.LXXXIII.</h2> I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my uncle Toby's story, and my own, in a tolerable straight line. Now, (four very squiggly lines across the page signed Inv.T.S and Scw.T.S) These were the four lines I moved in through my first, second, third, and fourth volumes (Alluding to the first edition.)—In the fifth volume I have been very good,—the precise line I have described in it being this: (one very squiggly line across the page with loops marked A,B,C,C,C,C,C,D) By which it appears, that except at the curve, marked A. where I took a trip to Navarre,—and the indented curve B. which is the short airing when I was there with the Lady Baussiere and her page,—I have not taken the least frisk of a digression, till John de la Casse's devils led me the round you see marked D.—for as for C C C C C they are nothing but parentheses, and the common ins and outs incident to the lives of the greatest ministers of state; and when compared with what men have done,—or with my own transgressions at the letters ABD—they vanish into nothing. In this last volume I have done better still—for from the end of Le Fever's episode, to the beginning of my uncle Toby's campaigns,—I have scarce stepped a yard out of my way. If I mend at this rate, it is not impossible—by the good leave of his grace of Benevento's devils—but I may arrive hereafter at the excellency of going on even thus: (straight line across the page) which is a line drawn as straight as I could draw it, by a writing-master's ruler (borrowed for that purpose), turning neither to the right hand or to the left. This right line,—the path-way for Christians to walk in! say divines— —The emblem of moral rectitude! says Cicero— —The best line! say cabbage planters—is the shortest line, says Archimedes, which can be drawn from one given point to another.— I wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart, in your next birth-day suits! —What a journey! Pray can you tell me,—that is, without anger, before I write my chapter upon straight lines—by what mistake—who told them so—or how it has come to pass, that your men of wit and genius have all along confounded this line, with the line of Gravitation? <h2>Chapter 3.LXXXIV.</h2> No—I think, I said, I would write two volumes every year, provided the vile cough which then tormented me, and which to this hour I dread worse than the devil, would but give me leave—and in another place—(but where, I can't recollect now) speaking of my book as a machine, and laying my pen and ruler down cross-wise upon the table, in order to gain the greater credit to it—I swore it should be kept a going at that rate these forty years, if it pleased but the fountain of life to bless me so long with health and good spirits. Now as for my spirits, little have I to lay to their charge—nay so very little (unless the mounting me upon a long stick and playing the fool with me nineteen hours out of the twenty-four, be accusations) that on the contrary, I have much—much to thank 'em for: cheerily have ye made me tread the path of life with all the burthens of it (except its cares) upon my back; in no one moment of my existence, that I remember, have ye once deserted me, or tinged the objects which came in my way, either with sable, or with a sickly green; in dangers ye gilded my horizon with hope, and when Death himself knocked at my door—ye bad him come again; and in so gay a tone of careless indifference, did ye do it, that he doubted of his commission— '—There must certainly be some mistake in this matter,' quoth he. Now there is nothing in this world I abominate worse, than to be interrupted in a story—and I was that moment telling Eugenius a most tawdry one in my way, of a nun who fancied herself a shell-fish, and of a monk damn'd for eating a muscle, and was shewing him the grounds and justice of the procedure— '—Did ever so grave a personage get into so vile a scrape?' quoth Death. Thou hast had a narrow escape, Tristram, said Eugenius, taking hold of my hand as I finished my story— But there is no living, Eugenius, replied I, at this rate; for as this son of a whore has found out my lodgings— —You call him rightly, said Eugenius,—for by sin, we are told, he enter'd the world—I care not which way he enter'd, quoth I, provided he be not in such a hurry to take me out with him—for I have forty volumes to write, and forty thousand things to say and do which no body in the world will say and do for me, except thyself; and as thou seest he has got me by the throat (for Eugenius could scarce hear me speak across the table), and that I am no match for him in the open field, had I not better, whilst these few scatter'd spirits remain, and these two spider legs of mine (holding one of them up to him) are able to support me—had I not better, Eugenius, fly for my life? 'Tis my advice, my dear Tristram, said Eugenius—Then by heaven! I will lead him a dance he little thinks of—for I will gallop, quoth I, without looking once behind me, to the banks of the Garonne; and if I hear him clattering at my heels—I'll scamper away to mount Vesuvius—from thence to Joppa, and from Joppa to the world's end; where, if he follows me, I pray God he may break his neck— —He runs more risk there, said Eugenius, than thou. Eugenius's wit and affection brought blood into the cheek from whence it had been some months banish'd—'twas a vile moment to bid adieu in; he led me to my chaise—Allons! said I; the post-boy gave a crack with his whip—off I went like a cannon, and in half a dozen bounds got into Dover. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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