The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy [176]
an honest triumph in my uncle Toby's looks as he marched up to the ramparts! What intense pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood over the corporal, reading the paragraph ten times over to him, as he was at work, lest, peradventure, he should make the breach an inch too wide,--or leave it an inch too narrow.--But when the chamade was beat, and the corporal helped my uncle up it, and followed with the colours in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts-- Heaven! Earth! Sea!--but what avails apostrophes?--with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draught.
In this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a week or ten days together, which detained the Flanders mail, and kept them so long in torture,--but still 'twas the torture of the happy--In this track, I say, did my uncle Toby and Trim move for many years, every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them on.
The first year's campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the plain and simple method I've related.
In the second year, in which my uncle Toby took Liege and Ruremond, he thought he might afford the expence of four handsome draw-bridges; of two of which I have given an exact description in the former part of my work.
At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with port- cullises:--These last were converted afterwards into orgues, as the better thing; and during the winter of the same year, my uncle Toby, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at Christmas, treated himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at the corner of the bowling-green, betwixt which point and the foot of the glacis, there was left a little kind of an esplanade for him and the corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon.
--The sentry-box was in case of rain.
All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which enabled my uncle Toby to take the field with great splendour.
My father would often say to Yorick, that if any mortal in the whole universe had done such a thing except his brother Toby, it would have been looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon the parade and prancing manner in which Lewis XIV. from the beginning of the war, but particularly that very year, had taken the field--But 'tis not my brother Toby's nature, kind soul! my father would add, to insult any one.
--But let us go on.
Chapter 3.LXVI.
I must observe, that although in the first year's campaign, the word town is often mentioned,--yet there was no town at that time within the polygon; that addition was not made till the summer following the spring in which the bridges and sentry-box were painted, which was the third year of my uncle Toby's campaigns,--when upon his taking Amberg, Bonn, and Rhinberg, and Huy and Limbourg, one after another, a thought came into the corporal's head, that to talk of taking so many towns, without one Town to shew for it,--was a very nonsensical way of going to work, and so proposed to my uncle Toby, that they should have a little model of a town built for them,- -to be run up together of slit deals, and then painted, and clapped within the interior polygon to serve for all.
My uncle Toby felt the good of the project instantly, and instantly agreed to it, but with the addition of two singular improvements, of which he was almost as proud as if he had been the original inventor of the project itself.
The one was, to have the town built exactly in the style of those of which it was most likely to be the representative:--with grated windows, and the gable ends of the houses, facing the streets, &c. &c.--as those in Ghent and Bruges, and the rest of the towns in Brabant and Flanders.
The other was, not to have the houses run up together, as the corporal proposed,
In this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a week or ten days together, which detained the Flanders mail, and kept them so long in torture,--but still 'twas the torture of the happy--In this track, I say, did my uncle Toby and Trim move for many years, every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them on.
The first year's campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the plain and simple method I've related.
In the second year, in which my uncle Toby took Liege and Ruremond, he thought he might afford the expence of four handsome draw-bridges; of two of which I have given an exact description in the former part of my work.
At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with port- cullises:--These last were converted afterwards into orgues, as the better thing; and during the winter of the same year, my uncle Toby, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at Christmas, treated himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at the corner of the bowling-green, betwixt which point and the foot of the glacis, there was left a little kind of an esplanade for him and the corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon.
--The sentry-box was in case of rain.
All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which enabled my uncle Toby to take the field with great splendour.
My father would often say to Yorick, that if any mortal in the whole universe had done such a thing except his brother Toby, it would have been looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon the parade and prancing manner in which Lewis XIV. from the beginning of the war, but particularly that very year, had taken the field--But 'tis not my brother Toby's nature, kind soul! my father would add, to insult any one.
--But let us go on.
Chapter 3.LXVI.
I must observe, that although in the first year's campaign, the word town is often mentioned,--yet there was no town at that time within the polygon; that addition was not made till the summer following the spring in which the bridges and sentry-box were painted, which was the third year of my uncle Toby's campaigns,--when upon his taking Amberg, Bonn, and Rhinberg, and Huy and Limbourg, one after another, a thought came into the corporal's head, that to talk of taking so many towns, without one Town to shew for it,--was a very nonsensical way of going to work, and so proposed to my uncle Toby, that they should have a little model of a town built for them,- -to be run up together of slit deals, and then painted, and clapped within the interior polygon to serve for all.
My uncle Toby felt the good of the project instantly, and instantly agreed to it, but with the addition of two singular improvements, of which he was almost as proud as if he had been the original inventor of the project itself.
The one was, to have the town built exactly in the style of those of which it was most likely to be the representative:--with grated windows, and the gable ends of the houses, facing the streets, &c. &c.--as those in Ghent and Bruges, and the rest of the towns in Brabant and Flanders.
The other was, not to have the houses run up together, as the corporal proposed,