[ CHAPTER XVII]
——And pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it may not be the child’s hip, as well as the child’s head?———’Tis most certainly the head, replied the midwife. Because, continued Dr. Slop (turning to my father) as positive as these old ladies generally are—’tis a point very difficult to know—and yet of the greatest consequence to be known;——because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head—there is a possibility (if it is a boy) that the forceps * * * * * *
——What the possibility was, Dr. Slop whispered very low to my father, and then to my uncle Toby.——There is no such danger, continued he, with the head.—No, in truth, quoth my father—but when your possibility has taken place at the hip—you may as well take off the head too.
——It is morally impossible the reader should understand this——’tis enough Dr. Slop understood it;——so taking the green bays bag in his hand, with the help of Obadiah’s pumps, he tripp’d pretty nimbly, for a man of his size, across the room to the door———and from the door was shewn the way, by the good old midwife, to my mother’s apartments.
[ CHAPTER XVIII]
It is two hours, and ten minutes—and no more—cried my father, looking at his watch, since Dr. Slop and Obadiah arrived—and I know not how it happens, brother Toby—but to my imagination it seems almost an age.
——Here—pray, Sir, take hold of my cap—nay, take the bell along with it, and my pantoufles too.
Now, Sir, they are all at your service; and I freely make you a present of ’em, on condition you give me all your attention to this chapter.
Though my father said, “he knew not how it happen’d,”—yet he knew very well how it happen’d;——and at the instant he spoke it, was pre-determined in his mind to give my uncle Toby a clear account of the matter by a metaphysical dissertation upon the subject of duration and its simple modes, in order to shew my uncle Toby by what mechanism and mensurations in the brain it came to pass, that the rapid succession of their ideas, and the eternal scampering of the discourse from one thing to another, since Dr. Slop had come into the room, had lengthened out so short a period to so inconceivable an extent.——“I know not how it happens—cried my father,—but it seems an age.”
——’Tis owing entirely, quoth my uncle Toby, to the succession of our ideas.