——And what is he to do there? cried my uncle Toby——
Nothing, quoth my father, but to get in——or let it alone.
Now widow Wadman, as I told you before, would do neither the one or the other.
She stood however ready harnessed and caparisoned at all points, to watch accidents.
[ CHAPTER XIV]
The Fates, who certainly all foreknew of these amours of widow Wadman and my uncle Toby, had, from the first creation of matter and motion (and with more courtesy than they usually do things of this kind), established such a chain of causes and effects hanging so fast to one another, that it was scarce possible for my uncle Toby to have dwelt in any other house in the world, or to have occupied any other garden in Christendom, but the very house and garden which join’d and laid parallel to Mrs. Wadman’s; this, with the advantage of a thickset arbour in Mrs. Wadman’s garden, but planted in the hedge-row of my uncle Toby’s, put all the occasions into her hands which Love-militancy wanted; she could observe my uncle Toby’s motions, and was mistress likewise of his councils of war; and as his unsuspecting heart had given leave to the corporal, through the mediation of Bridget, to make her a wicker-gate of communication to enlarge her walks, it enabled her to carry on her approaches to the very door of the sentry-box; and sometimes out of gratitude, to make an attack, and endeavour to blow my uncle Toby up in the very sentry-box itself.
[ CHAPTER XV]
It is a great pity——but ’tis certain from every day’s observation of man, that he may be set on fire like a candle, at either end—provided there is a sufficient wick standing out; if there is not—there’s an end of the affair; and if there is—by lighting it at the bottom, as the flame in that case has the misfortune generally to put out itself—there’s an end of the affair again.
For my part, could I always have the ordering of it which way I would be burnt myself—for I cannot bear the thoughts of being burnt like a beast—I would oblige a housewife constantly to light me at the top; for then I should burn down decently to the socket; that is, from my head to my heart, from my heart to my liver, from my liver to my bowels, and so on by the meseraick veins and arteries, through all the turns and lateral insertions of the intestines and their tunicles to the blind gut——
——I beseech you, doctor Slop, quoth my uncle Toby, interrupting him as he mentioned the blind gut, in a discourse with my father the night my mother was brought to bed of me——I beseech you, quoth my uncle Toby, to tell me which is the blind gut; for, old as I am, I vow I do not know to this day where it lies.