——Go, tell Susannah, Obadiah, to step here.
She is run upstairs, answered Obadiah, this very instant, sobbing and crying, and wringing her hands as if her heart would break.
We shall have a rare month of it, said my father, turning his head from Obadiah, and looking wistfully in my uncle Toby’s face for some time—we shall have a devilish month of it, brother Toby, said my father, setting his arms a-kimbo, and shaking his head; fire, water, women, wind—brother Toby!—’Tis some misfortune, quoth my uncle Toby.——That it is, cried my father—to have so many jarring elements breaking loose, and riding triumph in every corner of a gentleman’s house—Little boots it to the peace of a family, brother Toby, that you and I possess ourselves, and sit here silent and unmoved——whilst such a storm is whistling over our heads.———
And what’s the matter, Susannah? They have called the child Tristram——and my mistress is just got out of an hysterick fit about it——No——’tis not my fault, said Susannah—I told him it was Tristram-gistus.
——Make tea for yourself, brother Toby, said my father, taking down his hat——but how different from the sallies and agitations of voice and members which a common reader would imagine!
—For he spake in the sweetest modulation—and took down his hat with the genteelest movement of limbs, that ever affliction harmonized and attuned together.
——Go to the bowling-green for corporal Trim, said my uncle Toby, speaking to Obadiah, as soon as my father left the room.
[ CHAPTER XVII]
When the misfortune of my Nose fell so heavily upon my father’s head;—the reader remembers that he walked instantly up stairs, and cast himself down upon his bed; and from hence, unless he has a great insight into human nature, he will be apt to expect a rotation of the same ascending and descending movements from him, upon his misfortune of my Name;——no.
The different weight, dear Sir——nay even the different package of two vexations of the same weight——makes a very wide difference in our manner of bearing and getting through with them.——It is not half an hour ago, when (in the great hurry and precipitation of a poor devil’s writing for daily bread) I threw a fair sheet, which I had just finished, and carefully wrote out, slap into the fire, instead of the foul one.