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The cart before the horse, replied my father——

——And what has he to do there? cried my uncle Toby——

Nothing, quoth my father, but to get in——or let it alone.

Now widow Wadman, as I told you before, would do neither the one or the other.

She stood however ready harnessed and caparisoned at all points to watch accidents.

CHAP. XIV

The Fates, who certainly all foreknew of these amours of widow Wadman and my uncle Toby, had, from the first creation of matter and motion (and with more courtesy than they usually do things of this kind) established such a chain of causes and effects hanging so fast to one another, that it was scarce possible for my uncle Toby to have dwelt in any other house in the world, or to have occupied any other garden in Christendom, but the very house and garden which join’d and laid parallel to Mrs. Wadman’s; this, with the advantage of a thickset arbour in Mrs. Wadman’s garden, but planted in the hedgerow of my uncle Toby’s, put all the occasions into her hands which Love-militancy wanted; she could observe my uncle Toby’s motions, and was mistress likewise of his councils of war; and as his unsuspecting heart had given leave to the corporal, through the mediation of Bridget, to make her a wicker gate1 of communication to enlarge her walks, it enabled her to carry on her approaches to the very door of the sentry-box; and sometimes out of gratitude, to make the attack, and endeavour to blow my uncle Toby up in the very sentry box itself.

CHAP. XV

It is a great pity——but ’tis certain from every day’s observation of man, that he may be set on fire like a candle, at either end1—provided there is a sufficient wick standing out; if there is not–there’s an end of the affair; and if there is—by lighting it at the bottom, as the flame in that case has the misfortune generally to put out itself—there’s an end of the affair again.

For my part, could I always have the ordering of it which way I would be burnt myself—for I cannot bear the thoughts of being burnt like a beast—I would oblige a housewife constantly to light me at the top; for then I should burn down decently to the socket; that is, from my head to my heart, from my heart to my liver, from my liver to my bowels, and so on by the meseraick veins and arteries, through all the turns and lateral insertions of the intestines and their tunicles, to the blind gut2——

——I beseech you, doctor Slop, quoth my uncle Toby, interrupting him as he mentioned the blind gut, in a discourse with my father the night my mother was brought to bed of me——I beseech you, quoth my uncle Toby, to tell me which is the blind gut; for, old as I am, I vow I do not know to this day where it lies.

The blind gut, answered doctor Slop, lies betwixt the Illion and Colon——

——In a man? said my father.

——’tis precisely the same, cried doctor Slop, in a woman——

That’s more than I know; quoth my father.

CHAP. XVI

——And so to make sure of both systems, Mrs. Wadman predetermined to light my uncle Toby neither at this end or that; but like a prodigal’s candle, to light him, if possible, at both ends at once.

Now, through all the lumber rooms of military furniture, including both of horse and foot, from the great arsenal of Venice to the Tower of London (exclusive) if Mrs. Wadman had been rummaging for seven years together, and with Bridget to help her, she could not have found any one blind or mantelet so fit for her purpose, as that which the expediency of my uncle Toby’s affairs had fix’d up ready to her hands.

I believe I have not told you——but I don’t know——possibly I have——be it as it will, ’tis one of the number of those many things, which a man had better do over again, than dispute about it—That whatever town or fortress the corporal was at work upon, during the course of their campaign, my uncle Toby always took care on the inside of his sentry-box, which was towards his left hand, to have a plan of the place, fasten’d up with two or three pins at the top, but loose at the bottom,