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By Root 1642 0

so, whilst I have power to preserve any thing) upon the lower corner of which, on the right hand side, there is still remaining the marks of a snuffy2 finger and thumb, which there is all the reason in the world to imagine, were Mrs. Wadman’s; for the opposite side of the margin, which I suppose to have been my uncle Toby’s, is absolutely clean: This seems an authenticated record of one of these attacks; for there are vestigia of the two punctures partly grown up, but still visible on the opposite corner of the map, which are unquestionably the very holes, through which it has been pricked up in the sentry-box——

By all that is priestly! I value this precious relick, with it’s stigmata and pricks, more than all the relicks of the Romish church——always excepting, when I am writing upon these matters, the pricks which enter’d the flesh of St. Radagunda in the desert, which in your road from FESSE to CLUNY,3 the nuns of that name will shew you for love.

CHAP. XVIII

I think, an’ please your honour, quoth Trim, the fortifications are quite destroyed——and the bason is upon a level with the mole——I think so too; replied my uncle Toby with a sigh half suppress’d——but step into the parlour, Trim, for the stipulation——it lies upon the table.

It has lain there these six weeks, replied the corporal, till this very morning that the old woman kindled the fire with it—

——Then, said my uncle Toby, there is no further occasion for our services. The more, an’ please your honour, the pity, said the corporal; in uttering which he cast his spade into the wheel-barrow, which was beside him, with an air the most expressive of disconsolation that can be imagined, and was heavily turning about to look for his pick-ax, his pioneer’s shovel, his picquets and other little military stores, in order to carry them off the field——when a heigh ho! from the sentry-box, which, being made of thin slit deal, reverberated the sound more sorrowfully to his ear, forbad him.

——No; said the corporal to himself, I’ll do it before his honour rises to-morrow morning; so taking his spade out of the wheel-barrow again, with a little earth in it, as if to level something at the foot of the glacis——but with a real intent to approach nearer to his master, in order to divert him——he loosen’d a sod or two——pared their edges with his spade, and having given them a gentle blow or two with the back of it, he sat himself down close by my uncle Toby’s feet, and began as follows.

CHAP. XIX

It was a thousand pities——though I believe, an’ please your honour, I am going to say but a foolish kind of a thing for a soldier——

A soldier, cried my uncle Toby, interrupting the corporal, is no more exempt from saying a foolish thing, Trim, than a man of letters——But not so often; and please your honour, replied the corporal——My uncle Toby gave a nod.

It was a thousand pities then, said the corporal, casting his eye upon Dunkirk, and the mole, as Servius Sulpicius,1 in returning out of Asia (when he sailed from Ægina towards Megara) did upon Corinth and Pyreus——

—“It was a thousand pities, an’ please your honour, to destroy these works——and a thousand pities to have let them stood.”——

——Thou art right, Trim, in both cases: said my uncle Toby——This, continued the corporal, is the reason, that from the beginning of their demolition to the end——I have never once whistled, or sung, or laugh’d, or cry’d, or talk’d of pass’d done deeds, or told your honour one story good or bad——

——Thou hast many excellencies, Trim, said my uncle Toby, and I hold it not the least of them, as thou happenest to be a story-teller, that of the number thou hast told me, either to amuse me in my painful hours, or divert me in my grave ones—thou hast seldom told me a bad one——

——Because, an’ please your honour, except one of a King of Bohemia and his seven castles,—they are all true; for they are about myself——

I do not like the subject the worse, Trim, said my uncle Toby, on that score: But prithee what is this story? thou hast excited my curiosity.

I’ll tell it your honour, quoth the corporal, directly