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Chapter 34 Tis a pity, cried my father one winters night, after a three hours painful translation of Slawkenbergiustis a pity, cried my father, putting my mothers threadpaper into the book for a mark, as he spokethat truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest siege. Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle Tobys fancy, during the time of my fathers explanation of Prignitz to himhaving nothing to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the bowling-green;his body might as well have taken a turn there tooso that with all the semblance of a deep school-man intent upon the medius terminusmy uncle Toby was in fact as ignorant of the whole lecture, and all its pros and cons, as if my father had been translating Hafen Slawkenbergius from the Latin tongue into the Cherokee. But the word siege, like a talismanic power, in my fathers metaphor, wafting back my uncle Tobys fancy, quick as a note could follow the touchhe opend his earsand my father observing that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to profitmy father with great pleasure began his sentence againchanging only the plan, and dropping the metaphor of the siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers my father apprehended from it. Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side, brother Tobyconsidering what ingenuity these learned men have all shewn in their solutions of noses.Can noses be dissolved? replied my uncle Toby. My father thrust back his chairrose upput on his hattook four long strides to the doorjerked it openthrust his head half way outshut the door againtook no notice of the bad hingereturned to the tablepluckd my mothers thread-paper out of Slawkenbergiuss bookwent hastily to his bureauwalked slowly backtwisted my mothers thread-paper about his thumbunbuttond his waistcoatthrew my mothers thread-paper into the firebit her sattin pin-cushion in two, filld his mouth with bran confounded it;but mark!the oath of confusion was levelld at my uncle Tobys brainwhich was een confused enough alreadythe curse came charged only with the branthe bran, may it please your honours, was no more than powder to the ball. Twas well my fathers passions lasted not long; for so long as they did last, they led him a busy life ont; and it is one of the most unaccountable problems that ever I met with in my observations of human nature, that nothing should prove my fathers mettle so much, or make his passions go off so like gun-powder, as the unexpected strokes his science met with from the quaint simplicity of my uncle Tobys questions.Had ten dozen of hornets stung him behind in so many different places all at one timehe could not have exerted more mechanical functions in fewer seconds- -or started half so much, as with one single quaere of three words unseasonably popping in full upon him in his hobby-horsical career. Twas all one to my uncle Tobyhe smoked his pipe on with unvaried composurehis heart never intended offence to his brotherand as his head could seldom find out where the sting of it layhe always gave my father the credit of cooling by himself.He was five minutes and thirty-five seconds about it in the present case. By all thats good! said my father, swearing, as he came to himself, and taking the oath out of Ernulphuss digest of curses(though to do my father justice it was a fault (as he told Dr. Slop in the affair of Ernulphus) which he as seldom committed as any man upon earth)By all thats good and great! brother Toby, said my father, if it was not for the aids of philosophy, which befriend one so much as they doyou would put a man beside all temper.Why, by the solutions of noses, of which I was telling you, I meant, as you might have known, had you favoured me with one grain of attention, the various accounts which learned men of different kinds of knowledge have given the world of the causes of short and long noses.There is no cause but one, replied my uncle Tobywhy one mans nose is longer than anothers, but because that God pleases to have it so.- -That is Grangousiers solution, said my father.Tis he, continued my uncle Toby, looking up, and not regarding my fathers interruption, who makes us all, and frames and puts us together in such forms and proportions, and for such ends, as is agreeable to his infinite |
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