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Susannah ran with all speed along the gallery.

My father made all possible speed to find his breeches.

Susannah got the start, and kept it—’tis Tris—something, cried Susannah—There is no christian name in the world, said the curate, beginning with Tris—but Tristram. Then ’tis Tristram-gistus, quoth Susannah.

—There is no gistus to it, noodle!—’tis my own name, replied the curate, dipping his hand as he spoke into the bason—Tristram! said he, &c. &c. &c. &c. so Tristram was I called, and Tristram shall I be to the day of my death.

My father followed Susannah with his night-gown across his arm, with nothing more than his breeches on, fastened through haste with but a single button, and that button through haste thrust only half into the button-hole.

—She has not forgot the name, cried my father, half opening the door—No, no, said the curate, with a tone of intelligence—And the child is better, cried Susannah—And how does your mistress? As well, said Susannah, as can be expected—Pish! said my father, the button of his breeches slipping out of the button-hole—So that whether the interjection was levelled at Susannah, or the button-hole,—whether pish was an interjection of contempt or an interjection of modesty, is a doubt, and must be a doubt till I shall have time to write the three following favorite chapters, that is, my chapter of chamber-maids—my chapter of pishes, and my chapter of button-holes.

All the light I am able to give the reader at present is this, that the moment my father cried Pish! he whisk’d himself about—and with his breeches held up by one hand, and his night-gown thrown across the arm of the other, he returned along the gallery to bed, something slower than he came.

CHAP. XV

I wish I could write a chapter upon sleep.

A fitter occasion could never have presented itself, than what this moment offers, when all the curtains of the family are drawn—the candles put out—and no creature’s eyes are open but a single one, for the other has been shut these twenty years, of my mother’s nurse.

It is a fine subject!

And yet, as fine as it is, I would undertake to write a dozen chapters upon button-holes, both quicker and with more fame than a single chapter upon this.

Button-holes!——there is something lively in the very idea of ’em—and trust me, when I get amongst ’em—You gentry with great beards—look as grave as you will—I’ll make merry work with my button-holes—I shall have ’em all to myself—’tis a maiden subject—I shall run foul of no man’s wisdom or fine sayings in it.

But for sleep—I know I shall make nothing of it before I begin—I am no dab at your fine sayings in the first place—and in the next, I cannot for my soul set a grave face upon a bad matter, and tell the world—’tis the refuge of the unfortunate—the enfranchisement of the prisoner—the downy lap of the hopeless, the weary and the brokenhearted; nor could I set out with a lye in my mouth, by affirming, that of all the soft and delicious functions of our nature, by which the great Author of it, in his bounty, has been pleased to recompence the sufferings wherewith his justice and his good pleasure has wearied us,—that this is the chiefest (I know pleasures worth ten of it) or what a happiness it is to man, when the anxieties and passions of the day are over, and he lays down upon his back, that his soul shall be so seated within him, that which ever way she turns her eyes, the heavens shall look calm and sweet above her—no desire—or fear—or doubt that troubles the air, nor any difficulty pass’d, present, or to come, that the imagination may not pass over without offence, in that sweet secession.

—“God’s blessing, said Sancho Panca, be upon the man who first invented this self-same thing called sleep——it covers a man all over like a cloak.”1 Now there is more to me in this, and it speaks warmer to my heart and affections, than all the dissertations squeez’d out of the heads of the learned together upon the subject.

—Not that I altogether disapprove