The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy [118]
crying, and wringing her hands as if her heart would break.
We shall have a rare month of it, said my father, turning his head from Obadiah, and looking wistfully in my uncle Toby's face for some time--we shall have a devilish month of it, brother Toby, said my father, setting his arms a'kimbo, and shaking his head; fire, water, women, wind--brother Toby!--'Tis some misfortune, quoth my uncle Toby.--That it is, cried my father--to have so many jarring elements breaking loose, and riding triumph in every corner of a gentleman's house--Little boots it to the peace of a family, brother Toby, that you and I possess ourselves, and sit here silent and unmoved--whilst such a storm is whistling over our heads.--
And what's the matter, Susannah? They have called the child Tristram--and my mistress is just got out of an hysterick fit about it--No!--'tis not my fault, said Susannah--I told him it was Tristram-gistus.
--Make tea for yourself, brother Toby, said my father, taking down his hat- -but how different from the sallies and agitations of voice and members which a common reader would imagine!
--For he spake in the sweetest modulation--and took down his hat with the genteelest movement of limbs, that ever affliction harmonized and attuned together.
--Go to the bowling-green for corporal Trim, said my uncle Toby, speaking to Obadiah, as soon as my father left the room.
Chapter 2.LII.
When the misfortune of my Nose fell so heavily upon my father's head;--the reader remembers that he walked instantly up stairs, and cast himself down upon his bed; and from hence, unless he has a great insight into human nature, he will be apt to expect a rotation of the same ascending and descending movements from him, upon this misfortune of my Name;--no.
The different weight, dear Sir--nay even the different package of two vexations of the same weight--makes a very wide difference in our manner of bearing and getting through with them.--It is not half an hour ago, when (in the great hurry and precipitation of a poor devil's writing for daily bread) I threw a fair sheet, which I had just finished, and carefully wrote out, slap into the fire, instead of the foul one.
Instantly I snatch'd off my wig, and threw it perpendicularly, with all imaginable violence, up to the top of the room--indeed I caught it as it fell--but there was an end of the matter; nor do I think any think else in Nature would have given such immediate ease: She, dear Goddess, by an instantaneous impulse, in all provoking cases, determines us to a sally of this or that member--or else she thrusts us into this or that place, or posture of body, we know not why--But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries--the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works: so that this, like a thousand other things, falls out for us in a way, which tho' we cannot reason upon it--yet we find the good of it, may it please your reverences and your worships--and that's enough for us.
Now, my father could not lie down with this affliction for his life--nor could he carry it up stairs like the other--he walked composedly out with it to the fish-pond.
Had my father leaned his head upon his hand, and reasoned an hour which way to have gone--reason, with all her force, could not have directed him to any think like it: there is something, Sir, in fish-ponds--but what it is, I leave to system-builders and fish-pond-diggers betwixt 'em to find out-- but there is something, under the first disorderly transport of the humours, so unaccountably becalming in an orderly and a sober walk towards one of them, that I have often wondered that neither Pythagoras, nor Plato, nor Solon, nor Lycurgus, nor Mahomet, nor any one of your noted lawgivers, ever gave order about them.
Chapter 2.LIII.
Your honour, said Trim, shutting the parlour-door before he began to speak,
We shall have a rare month of it, said my father, turning his head from Obadiah, and looking wistfully in my uncle Toby's face for some time--we shall have a devilish month of it, brother Toby, said my father, setting his arms a'kimbo, and shaking his head; fire, water, women, wind--brother Toby!--'Tis some misfortune, quoth my uncle Toby.--That it is, cried my father--to have so many jarring elements breaking loose, and riding triumph in every corner of a gentleman's house--Little boots it to the peace of a family, brother Toby, that you and I possess ourselves, and sit here silent and unmoved--whilst such a storm is whistling over our heads.--
And what's the matter, Susannah? They have called the child Tristram--and my mistress is just got out of an hysterick fit about it--No!--'tis not my fault, said Susannah--I told him it was Tristram-gistus.
--Make tea for yourself, brother Toby, said my father, taking down his hat- -but how different from the sallies and agitations of voice and members which a common reader would imagine!
--For he spake in the sweetest modulation--and took down his hat with the genteelest movement of limbs, that ever affliction harmonized and attuned together.
--Go to the bowling-green for corporal Trim, said my uncle Toby, speaking to Obadiah, as soon as my father left the room.
Chapter 2.LII.
When the misfortune of my Nose fell so heavily upon my father's head;--the reader remembers that he walked instantly up stairs, and cast himself down upon his bed; and from hence, unless he has a great insight into human nature, he will be apt to expect a rotation of the same ascending and descending movements from him, upon this misfortune of my Name;--no.
The different weight, dear Sir--nay even the different package of two vexations of the same weight--makes a very wide difference in our manner of bearing and getting through with them.--It is not half an hour ago, when (in the great hurry and precipitation of a poor devil's writing for daily bread) I threw a fair sheet, which I had just finished, and carefully wrote out, slap into the fire, instead of the foul one.
Instantly I snatch'd off my wig, and threw it perpendicularly, with all imaginable violence, up to the top of the room--indeed I caught it as it fell--but there was an end of the matter; nor do I think any think else in Nature would have given such immediate ease: She, dear Goddess, by an instantaneous impulse, in all provoking cases, determines us to a sally of this or that member--or else she thrusts us into this or that place, or posture of body, we know not why--But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries--the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works: so that this, like a thousand other things, falls out for us in a way, which tho' we cannot reason upon it--yet we find the good of it, may it please your reverences and your worships--and that's enough for us.
Now, my father could not lie down with this affliction for his life--nor could he carry it up stairs like the other--he walked composedly out with it to the fish-pond.
Had my father leaned his head upon his hand, and reasoned an hour which way to have gone--reason, with all her force, could not have directed him to any think like it: there is something, Sir, in fish-ponds--but what it is, I leave to system-builders and fish-pond-diggers betwixt 'em to find out-- but there is something, under the first disorderly transport of the humours, so unaccountably becalming in an orderly and a sober walk towards one of them, that I have often wondered that neither Pythagoras, nor Plato, nor Solon, nor Lycurgus, nor Mahomet, nor any one of your noted lawgivers, ever gave order about them.
Chapter 2.LIII.
Your honour, said Trim, shutting the parlour-door before he began to speak,