toothpicks, nor lay out a shilling upon a band-box, the year round: and for the six months I'm in the country, I'm upon so small a scale, that with all the good temper in the world, I outdo Rousseau a bar-length for I keep neither man nor boy, nor horse, nor cow, nor dog, nor cat, nor anything that can eat or drink, except a thin poor piece of a vestal (to keep my fire in) and who has generally as bad an appetite as myself: but, if you think this makes a philosopher of me, I would not, my good people, give a rush for your judgments. True philosophy; but there is no treating the subject whilst my uncle is whistling Lillibullero. Let us go into the house. CHAPTER LIII. CHAPTER LIV. it there, an' please your Honor, this morning, answered Trim. Then prithee step directly for it, Trim, said my uncle Toby, and bring it into the parlor. The corporal did not approve of the orders; but most cheerfully obeyed them. The first was not an act of his will; the second was; so he put on his Monterocap, and went as fast as his lame knee would let him. My uncle Toby returned into the parlor, and sat himself down again upon the sofa. You shall lay your finger upon the place, said my uncle Toby. I will not touch it, however, quoth Mrs. Wadman to herself. This requires a second translation :-it shows what little knowledge is got by mere words; we must go up to the first springs. Now, in order to clear up the mist which hangs upon these three pages, I must endeavor to be as clear as possible myself. Rub your hands thrice across your foreheads, blow your noses, cleanse your emunctories, sneeze, my good people; God bless you. Now give me all the help you can. * You shall see the very place, Madam, said my uncle Toby. CHAPTER LVI. As there are fifty different ends (count*ing all ends in, as well civil as religious) *for which a woman takes a husband, she first sets about and carefully weighs, then separates and distinguishes, in her mind, which of all that number of ends is hers; then, by discourse, inquiry, argumentation and inference, she investigates and finds out whether she has got hold of the right one; and, if she has, then, by pulling it gently this way and that way, she further forms a judgment, whether it will not break in the drawing. Mrs. Wadman blushed, looked towards the door, turned pale, blushed slightly again, recovered her natural color, blushed worse than ever; which, for the sake of the unlearned reader, I translate thus: "L-d! I cannot look at it! What would the world say if I looked at it? There can be no sin in looking at it. Whilst all this was running through Mrs. Wadman's imagination my uncle Toby had risen from the sofa, and got to the other side of the parlor-door, to give Trim an order about it in the passage * * * * * The imagery under which Slawkenbergius impresses this upon his reader's fancy, in the beginning of his third Decade, is so ludicrous, that the honor I bear the sex will not suffer me to quote it, otherwise it is not destitute of humor. She first, saith Slawkenbergius, stops the ass; and holding his halter in her left hand (lest he should get away) *she thrusts her right hand into the very bottom of his pannier, to search for it. For what? You'll not know the sooner, * I believe it is in the garret, said my uncle Toby. I saw quoth Slawkenbergius, for interrupting | ever better; she had formed him of the me. "I have nothing, good lady, but empty bottles," says the ass. "I am loaded with tripes," says the second. best and kindliest clay, and tempered it with her own milk, and breathed into it the sweetest spirit; she made him all gentle, generous, and humane; she had filled his heart with trust and confidence, and disposed every passage which led to it for the communication of the tenderest offices; she had, moreover, considered the other causes for which matrimony was ordained And thou art little better, quoth she to the third; for nothing is there in thy panniers but trunk-hose and pantofles; and so to the fourth and fifth, going on, one by one, through the whole string, till coming to the ass which carries it, she turns the pannier upside-down, looks at it, considers it, samples it, measures it, stretches it, wets it, dries it, then takes * her teeth to the warp and weft of it. Of what? for the love of Christ! I am determined, answered Slawkenbergius, that all the powers upon earth shall never wring that secret from my breast. CHAPTER LVII. * * And, accordingly, * * * * * * * * The Donation was not defeated by my uncle Toby's wound. Now, this last article was somewhat apocryphal; and the Devil, who is the great disturber of our faiths in this world, had raised scruples in Mrs. Wadman's brain about it; and like a true Devil as he was, had done his own work at the same time, by turning my uncle Toby's virtue thereupon into nothing but empty bottles, tripes, trunk-hose and pantofles. CHAPTER LVIII. We live in a world beset on all sides with mysteries and riddles, and so 't is no matter; else it seems strange, that Nature, who makes every thing so well to answer its destination, and seldom or never errs, unless for pastime, in giving such forms and aptitudes, to whatever passes through her hands, that, whether she designs for the plow, the caravan, the cart, or what-stock of honor a poor chambermaid was ever other creature she models, be it but an ass's foal, you are sure to have the thing you wanted; and yet, at the same time, should so eternally bungle it as she does, in making so simple a thing as a married man. Whether it is in the choice of the clay, or that it is frequently spoiled in the baking (by an excess of which a husband may turn out too crusty, you know, on one hand, or not enough so, through defect of heat, on the other); or whether this great artificer is not so attentive to the little Platonic exigencies of that part of the species, for whose use she is fabricating this; or that her Ladyship sometimes scarce knows what sort of a husband will do, I know not: we will discourse about it after supper. It is enough, that neither the observation itself, nor the reasoning upon it, are at all to the purpose-but rather against it; since, with regard to my uncle Toby's fitness for the marriage state, nothing was MRS. BRIDGET had pawned all the little worth in the world, that she would get to the bottom of the affair in ten days; and it was built upon one of the most concessible postulata in nature; namely, that, whilst my uncle Toby was making love to her mistress, the corporal could find nothing better to do than to make love to her; "And Fll let him as much as he will," said Bridget, "to get it out of him." Friendship has two garments, an outer and an under one. Bridget was serving her mistress's interests in the one, and doing the thing which most pleased herself in the other; so had as many stakes depending upon my uncle Toby's wound as the Devil himself. Mrs. Wadman had but one, and as it possibly might be her last (without discouraging Mrs. Bridget, or discrediting her talents) was determined to play her cards herself. She wanted not encouragement; a child might have looked into his hand; there was such a plainness and simplicity in his |