“And drink nothing!—nothing but water?”
—Impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the flood-gates of the brain——see how they give way!——
In swims Curiosity, beckoning to her damsels to follow—they dive into the centre of the current——
Fancy sits musing upon the bank, and with her eyes following the stream, turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bowsprits——And Desire, with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as they swim by her with the other——
O ye water-drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain, that ye have so often governed and turn’d this world about like a mill-wheel—grinding the faces of the impotent—bepowdering their ribs—bepeppering their noses, and changing sometimes even the very frame and face of nature——
If I was you, quoth Yorick, I would drink more water, Eugenius—And, if I was you, Yorick, replied Eugenius, so would I.
Which shews they had both read Longinus——
For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my own, as long as I live.
[ CHAPTER VI]
I wish my uncle Toby had been a water-drinker; for then the thing had been accounted for, That the first moment Widow Wadman saw him, she felt something stirring within her in his favour—Something!—something.