The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy [39]
mind,--and' please your Honour, I would face the glacis, as the finest fortifications are done in Flanders, with sods,-- and as your Honour knows they should be,--and I would make the walls and parapets with sods too.--The best engineers call them gazons, Trim, said my uncle Toby.--Whether they are gazons or sods, is not much matter, replied Trim; your Honour knows they are ten times beyond a facing either of brick or stone.--I know they are, Trim in some respects,--quoth my uncle Toby, nodding his head;--for a cannon-ball enters into the gazon right onwards, without bringing any rubbish down with it, which might fill the fosse, (as was the case at St. Nicolas's gate) and facilitate the passage over it.
Your Honour understands these matters, replied Corporal Trim, better than any officer in his Majesty's service;--but would your Honour please to let the bespeaking of the table alone, and let us but go into the country, I would work under your Honour's directions like a horse, and make fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all their batteries, saps, ditches, and palisadoes, that it should be worth all the world's riding twenty miles to go and see it.
My uncle Toby blushed as red as scarlet as Trim went on;--but it was not a blush of guilt,--of modesty,--or of anger,--it was a blush of joy;--he was fired with Corporal Trim's project and description.--Trim! said my uncle Toby, thou hast said enough.--We might begin the campaign, continued Trim, on the very day that his Majesty and the Allies take the field, and demolish them town by town as fast as--Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, say no more. Your Honour, continued Trim, might sit in your arm-chair (pointing to it) this fine weather, giving me your orders, and I would--Say no more, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby--Besides, your Honour would get not only pleasure and good pastime--but good air, and good exercise, and good health,--and your Honour's wound would be well in a month. Thou hast said enough, Trim,--quoth my uncle Toby (putting his hand into his breeches-pocket)--I like thy project mightily.--And if your Honour pleases, I'll this moment go and buy a pioneer's spade to take down with us, and I'll bespeak a shovel and a pick-axe, and a couple of--Say no more, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, leaping up upon one leg, quite overcome with rapture,--and thrusting a guinea into Trim's hand,--Trim, said my uncle Toby, say no more;--but go down, Trim, this moment, my lad, and bring up my supper this instant.
Trim ran down and brought up his master's supper,--to no purpose:--Trim's plan of operation ran so in my uncle Toby's head, he could not taste it.-- Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, get me to bed.--'Twas all one.--Corporal Trim's description had fired his imagination,--my uncle Toby could not shut his eyes.--The more he considered it, the more bewitching the scene appeared to him;--so that, two full hours before day-light, he had come to a final determination and had concerted the whole plan of his and Corporal Trim's decampment.
My uncle Toby had a little neat country-house of his own, in the village where my father's estate lay at Shandy, which had been left him by an old uncle, with a small estate of about one hundred pounds a-year. Behind this house, and contiguous to it, was a kitchen-garden of about half an acre, and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off from it by a tall yew hedge, was a bowling-green, containing just about as much ground as Corporal Trim wished for;--so that as Trim uttered the words, 'A rood and a half of ground to do what they would with,'--this identical bowling-green instantly presented itself, and became curiously painted all at once, upon the retina of my uncle Toby's fancy;--which was the physical cause of making him change colour, or at least of heightening his blush, to that immoderate degree I spoke of.
Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more heat and expectation, than my uncle Toby did, to enjoy this self-same thing in private;--I say in private;--for it was sheltered from the house, as I told you, by a
Your Honour understands these matters, replied Corporal Trim, better than any officer in his Majesty's service;--but would your Honour please to let the bespeaking of the table alone, and let us but go into the country, I would work under your Honour's directions like a horse, and make fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all their batteries, saps, ditches, and palisadoes, that it should be worth all the world's riding twenty miles to go and see it.
My uncle Toby blushed as red as scarlet as Trim went on;--but it was not a blush of guilt,--of modesty,--or of anger,--it was a blush of joy;--he was fired with Corporal Trim's project and description.--Trim! said my uncle Toby, thou hast said enough.--We might begin the campaign, continued Trim, on the very day that his Majesty and the Allies take the field, and demolish them town by town as fast as--Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, say no more. Your Honour, continued Trim, might sit in your arm-chair (pointing to it) this fine weather, giving me your orders, and I would--Say no more, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby--Besides, your Honour would get not only pleasure and good pastime--but good air, and good exercise, and good health,--and your Honour's wound would be well in a month. Thou hast said enough, Trim,--quoth my uncle Toby (putting his hand into his breeches-pocket)--I like thy project mightily.--And if your Honour pleases, I'll this moment go and buy a pioneer's spade to take down with us, and I'll bespeak a shovel and a pick-axe, and a couple of--Say no more, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, leaping up upon one leg, quite overcome with rapture,--and thrusting a guinea into Trim's hand,--Trim, said my uncle Toby, say no more;--but go down, Trim, this moment, my lad, and bring up my supper this instant.
Trim ran down and brought up his master's supper,--to no purpose:--Trim's plan of operation ran so in my uncle Toby's head, he could not taste it.-- Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, get me to bed.--'Twas all one.--Corporal Trim's description had fired his imagination,--my uncle Toby could not shut his eyes.--The more he considered it, the more bewitching the scene appeared to him;--so that, two full hours before day-light, he had come to a final determination and had concerted the whole plan of his and Corporal Trim's decampment.
My uncle Toby had a little neat country-house of his own, in the village where my father's estate lay at Shandy, which had been left him by an old uncle, with a small estate of about one hundred pounds a-year. Behind this house, and contiguous to it, was a kitchen-garden of about half an acre, and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off from it by a tall yew hedge, was a bowling-green, containing just about as much ground as Corporal Trim wished for;--so that as Trim uttered the words, 'A rood and a half of ground to do what they would with,'--this identical bowling-green instantly presented itself, and became curiously painted all at once, upon the retina of my uncle Toby's fancy;--which was the physical cause of making him change colour, or at least of heightening his blush, to that immoderate degree I spoke of.
Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more heat and expectation, than my uncle Toby did, to enjoy this self-same thing in private;--I say in private;--for it was sheltered from the house, as I told you, by a