King William, said my uncle Toby, addressing himself to Yorick, was so terribly provoked at count Solmes for disobeying his orders, that he would not suffer him to come into his presence for many months after.——I fear, answered Yorick, the squire will be as much provoked at the corporal, as the King at the count.——But ’twould be singularly hard in this case, continued he, if corporal Trim, who has behaved so diametrically opposite to count Solmes, should have the fate to be rewarded with the same disgrace:——too oft in this world, do things take that train.——I would spring a mine, cried my uncle Toby, rising up,——and blow up my fortifications, and my house with them, and we would perish under their ruins, ere I would stand by and see it.——Trim directed a slight,——but a grateful bow towards his master,——and so the chapter ends.
[ CHAPTER XXIII]
——Then, Yorick, replied my uncle Toby, you and I will lead the way abreast,——and do you, corporal, follow a few paces behind us.——And Susannah, an’ please your honour, said Trim, shall be put in the rear.——’Twas an excellent disposition,—and in this order, without either drums beating, or colours flying, they marched slowly from my uncle Toby’s house to Shandy-hall.
——I wish, said Trim, as they entered the door,—instead of the sash weights, I had cut off the church spout, as I once thought to have done.—You have cut off spouts enow, replied Yorick.——
[ CHAPTER XXIV]
As many pictures as have been given of my father, how like him soever in different airs and attitudes,—not one, or all of them, can ever help the reader to any kind of preconception of how my father would think, speak, or act, upon any untried occasion or occurrence of life.—There was that infinitude of oddities in him, and of chances along with it, by which handle he would take a thing,—it baffled, Sir, all calculations.——The truth was, his road lay so very far on one side, from that wherein most men travelled,—that every object before him presented a face and section of itself to his eye, altogether different from the plan and elevation of it seen by the rest of mankind.—In other words, ’twas a different object, and in course was differently considered:
This is the true reason, that my dear Jenny and I, as well as all the world besides us, have such eternal squabbles about nothing.—She looks at her outside,—I, at her in—. How is it possible we should agree about her value?
[ CHAPTER XXV]
’Tis a point settled,—and I mention it for the comfort of Confucius,[2] who is apt to get entangled in telling a plain story—that provided he keeps along the line of his story,—he may go backwards and forwards as he will,—’tis still held to be no digression.
This being premised, I take the benefit of the act of going backwards myself.