Part 46 (1/2)

-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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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-....

Chapter 3.Lx.x.xIII.

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 Ca.s.se'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 rect.i.tude! says Cicero-