——To be sure, Mr. Shandy, quoth my mother.
——Though if it comes to persuasion—said my father—Lord have mercy upon them.
Amen: said my mother, piano.
Amen: cried my father, fortissimè.
Amen: said my mother again——but with such a sighing cadence of personal pity at the end of it, as discomfited every fibre about my father—he instantly took out his almanack; but before he could untie it, Yorick’s congregation coming out of church, became a full answer to one half of his business with it—and my mother telling him it was a sacrament day—left him as little in doubt, as to the other part—He put his almanack into his pocket.
The first Lord of the Treasury thinking of ways and means, could not have returned home with a more embarrassed look.
[ CHAPTER XII]
Upon looking back from the end of the last chapter, and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the three following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not hold together a single year: nor is it a poor creeping digression (which but for the name of, a man might continue as well going on in the king’s highway) which will do the business——no; if it is to be a digression, it must be a good frisky one, and upon a frisky subject too, where neither the horse or his rider are to be caught, but by rebound.
The only difficulty, is raising powers suitable to the nature of the service: Fancy is capricious—Wit must not be searched for—and Pleasantry (good-natured slut as she is) will not come in at a call, was an empire to be laid at her feet.
——The best way for a man is to say his prayers——