Trim ran down and brought up his master’s supper,—to no purpose:—Trim’s plan of operation ran so in my uncle Toby’s head, he could not taste it.— Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, get me to bed.—’Twas all one.—Corporal Trim’s description had fired his imagination,—my uncle Toby could not shut his eyes.—The more he considered it, the more bewitching the scene appeared to him;—so that, two full hours before day-light, he had come to a final determination and had concerted the whole plan of his and Corporal Trim’s decampment.

My uncle Toby had a little neat country-house of his own, in the village where my father’s estate lay at Shandy, which had been left him by an old uncle, with a small estate of about one hundred pounds a- year. Behind this house, and contiguous to it, was a kitchen-garden of about half an acre, and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off from it by a tall yew hedge, was a bowling-green, containing just about as much ground as Corporal Trim wished for;—so that as Trim uttered the words, ’A rood and a half of ground to do what they would with,’—this identical bowling-green instantly presented itself, and became curiously painted all at once, upon the retina of my uncle Toby’s fancy;—which was the physical cause of making him change colour, or at least of heightening his blush, to that immoderate degree I spoke of.

Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more heat and expectation, than my uncle Toby did, to enjoy this self-same thing in private;—I say in private;—for it was sheltered from the house, as I told you, by a tall yew hedge, and was covered on the other three sides, from mortal sight, by rough holly and thick-set flowering shrubs:—so that the idea of not being seen, did not a little contribute to the idea of pleasure pre-conceived in my uncle Toby’s mind.—Vain thought! however thick it was planted about,—or private soever it might seem,—to think, dear uncle Toby, of enjoying a thing which took up a whole rood and a half of ground,- -and not have it known!

How my uncle Toby and Corporal Trim managed this matter,—with the history of their campaigns, which were no way barren of events,—may make no uninteresting under-plot in the epitasis and working-up of this drama.—At present the scene must drop,—and change for the parlour fire-side.