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CHAP. VI

———What can they be doing, brother? said my father.—I think, replied my uncle Toby,—taking, as I told you, his pipe from his mouth, and striking the ashes out of it as he began his sentence;----I think, replied he,—it would not be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell.

Pray, what’s all that racket over our heads, Obadiah?—quoth my father;—my brother and I can scarce hear ourselves speak.

Sir, answer’d Obadiah, making a bow towards his left shoulder,—my Mistress is taken very badly;—and where’s Susannah running down the garden there, as if they were going to ravish her.1——Sir, she is running the shortest cut into the town, replied Obadiah, to fetch the old midwife.——Then saddle a horse, quoth my father, and do you go directly for Dr. Slop, the man-midwife, with all our services,—and let him know your Mistress is fallen into labour,—and that I desire he will return with you with all speed.

It is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to my uncle Toby, as Obadiah shut the door,—as there is so expert an operator as Dr. Slop so near—that my wife should persist to the very last in this obstinate humour of hers, in trusting the life of my child, who has had one misfortune already, to the ignorance of an old woman;——and not only the life of my child, brother,—but her own life, and with it the lives of all the children I might, peradventure, have begot out of her hereafter.

Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle Toby, my sister does it to save the expence:—A pudding’s end,2—replied my father,—the Doctor must be paid the same for inaction as action,—if not better,—to keep him in temper.

—Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth my uncle Toby, in the simplicity of his heart,—but MODESTY:—My sister, I dare say, added he, does not care to let a man come so near her****.3 I will not say whether my uncle Toby had compleated the sentence or not;—’tis for his advantage to suppose he had,—as, I think, he could have added no ONE WORD which would have improved it.

If, on the contrary, my uncle Toby had not fully arrived at his period’s4 end,—then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of my father’s tobacco-pipe, for one of the neatest examples of that ornamental figure in oratory, which Rhetoricians stile the Aposiopesis.5—Just heaven! how does the Poco piu and the Poco meno of the Italian artists;—the insensible, MORE or LESS, determine the precise line of beauty in the sentence, as well as in the statue! How do the slight touches of the chisel,6 the pencil, the pen, the fiddle-stick, et cœtera,7—give the true swell, which gives the true pleasure!—O my countrymen!—be nice;—be cautious of your language;——and never, O! never let it be forgotten upon what small particles your eloquence and your fame depend.

——“My sister, mayhap, quoth my uncle Toby, does not choose to let a man come so near her ****” Make this dash,——’tis an Aposiopesis.—Take the dash away, and write Backside,—’tis Bawdy.—Scratch Backside out, and put Cover’d-way in,—’tis a Metaphor;—and, I dare say, as fortification ran so much in my uncle Toby’s head, that if he had been left to have added one word to the sentence,—that word was it.

But whether that was the case or not the case;—or whether the snapping of my father’s tobacco-pipe so critically, happened thro’ accident or anger,—will be seen in due time.

CHAP. VII

Tho’ my father was a good natural philosopher,1——yet he was something of a moral philosopher too; for which reason, when his tobacco-pipe snapp’d short in the middle,——he had nothing to do,—as such,—but to have taken hold of the two pieces, and thrown them gently upon the back of the fire.—He did no such thing;—he threw them with all the violence in the world;—and, to give the action still more emphasis,–he started up upon both his legs to do it.

This look’d something like heat;—and the manner of his reply to what my uncle Toby was saying prov’d it was so.

—“Not choose, quoth my father, (repeating my uncle Toby’s words) to