• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I perceived, then, I was beginning to be in love——

As she continued rub-rub-rubbing—I felt it spread from under her hand, an’ please your honour, to every part of my frame——

The more she rubb’d, and the longer strokes she took——the more the fire kindled in my veins——till at length, by two or three strokes longer than the rest——my passion rose to the highest pitch——I seiz’d her hand———

——And then, thou clapped’st it to thy lips, Trim, said my uncle Toby——and madest a speech.

Whether the corporal’s amour terminated precisely in the way my uncle Toby described it, is not material; it is enough that it contain’d in it the essence of all the love-romances which ever have been wrote since the beginning of the world.

CHAP. XXIII

As soon as the corporal had finished the story of his amour—or rather my uncle Toby for him—Mrs. Wadman silently sallied forth from her arbour, replaced the pin in her mob, pass’d the wicker gate, and advanced slowly towards my uncle Toby’s sentry-box: the disposition which Trim had made in my uncle Toby’s mind, was too favourable a crisis to be let slipp’d——

——The attack was determin’d upon: it was facilitated still more by my uncle Toby’s having ordered the corporal to wheel off the pioneer’s shovel, the spade, the pick-axe, the picquets, and other military stores which lay scatter’d upon the ground where Dunkirk stood—The corporal had march’d—the field was clear.

Now consider, sir, what nonsense it is, either in fighting, or writing, or any thing else (whether in rhyme to it, or not) which a man has occasion to do—to act by plan: for if ever Plan, independent of all circumstances, deserved registering in letters of gold (I mean in the archives of Gotham)1—it was certainly the PLAN of Mrs. Wadman’s attack of my uncle Toby in his sentry-box, BY PLAN——Now the Plan hanging up in it at this juncture, being the Plan of Dunkirk—and the tale of Dunkirk a tale of relaxation, it opposed every impression she could make: and besides, could she have gone upon it—the manœuvre of fingers and hands in the attack of the sentry-box, was so outdone by that of the fair Beguine’s, in Trim’s story—that just then, that particular attack, however successful before—became the most heartless attack that could be made——

O! let woman alone for this. Mrs. Wadman had scarce open’d the wicker-gate, when her genius sported with the change of circumstances.

——She formed a new attack in a moment.

CHAP. XXIV

——I am half distracted, captain Shandy, said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her cambrick handkerchief to her left eye, as she approach’d the door of my uncle Toby’s sentry-box——a mote——or sand——or something——I know not what, has got into this eye of mine——do look into it—it is not in the white—

In saying which, Mrs. Wadman edged herself close in beside my uncle Toby, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up———Do look into it—said she.

Honest soul! thou didst look into it with as much innocency of heart, as ever child look’d into a raree-shew-box;1 and ’twere as much a sin to have hurt thee.

——If a man will be peeping of his own accord into things of that nature——I’ve nothing to say to it——

My uncle Toby never did: and I will answer for him, that he would have sat quietly upon a sopha from June to January, (which, you know, takes in both the hot and cold months) with an eye as fine as the Thracian * Rodope’s2 besides him, without being able to tell, whether it was a black or a blue one.

The difficulty was to get my uncle Toby, to look at one, at all.

’Tis surmounted. And

I see him yonder with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes falling out of it—looking—and looking—then rubbing his eyes——and looking again, with twice the good nature that ever Gallileo look’d for a spot in the sun.3

——In vain! for by all the powers which animate the organ——Widow Wadman’s left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right——there is neither mote, or sand, or dust, or chaff, or speck, or particle of opake matter floating in it——there is