cheeks;-so feeling within himself that he had somehow or other got beyond his depth, he stopped short; and, without entering farther either into the pains or pleasures of matrimony, he laid his hand upon his heart, and made an offer to take them as they were, and share them along with her. When my uncle Toby had said this, he did not care to say it again; so, casting his eye upon the Bible which Mrs. Wadman had laid upon the table, he took it up; and popping, dear soul! upon a passage in it, of all others the most interesting to him,-which was the siege of Jericho,-he set himself to read it over,leaving his proposal of marriage, as he had done his declaration of love, to work with her after its own way. Now it wrought neither as an astringent nor a loosener; nor like opium, nor bark, nor mercury, nor buckthorn, nor any one drug which Nature had bestowed upon the world;-in short, it worked not at all in her; and the cause of that was, that there was something working there before.- -Babbler that I am! I have anticipated what it was a dozen times; but there is fire still in the subject.—Allons! CHAPTER CCCV. It is natural for a perfect stranger who is going from London to Edinburgh, to inquire, before he sets out, how many miles to York; which is about the half way::-nor does any body wonder, if he goes on and asks about the corporation, &c.— It was just as natural for Mrs. Wadman, whose first husband was all his time afflicted with a sciatica, to wish to know how far from the hip to the groin ; and how far she was likely to suffer more or less in her feelings, in the one case than in the other. She had accordingly read Drake's Anatomy from one end to the other. She had peeped into Wharton upon the Brain, and borrowed Graaf upon the Bones and Muscles;1 but could make nothing of it. She had reasoned likewise from her own powers,laid down theorems,-drawn consequences, and come to no conclusion. To clear up all, she had twice asked Doctor Slop, If poor Captain Shandy was ever likely to recover of his wound ?? He is recovered, Doctor Slop would say. What, quite? -Quite, madam. But what do you mean by a recovery? Mrs. Wadman would say. Doctor Slop was the worst man alive at definitions; and so Mrs. Wadman could get no knowledge. In short, there was no way to extract it, but from my uncle Toby himself. There is an accent of humanity in an inquiry of this kind, which lulls suspicion to rest;-and I am half persuaded the serpent got pretty near it, in his disCourse with Eve; for the propensity in the sex to be deceived could not be so great, that she should have boldness to hold chat with the devil, without it.—But there is an accent of humanity :-how shall I describe it? 'tis an accent which covers the part with a garment, and gives the inquirer a right to be as particular with it as your body-surgeon. -Was it without remission? -Was it more tolerable in bed? -Could he lie on both sides alike with it? -Was he able to mount a horse? -Was motion bad for it?' et cætera, were so tenderly spoke to, and so directed towards my uncle Toby's heart, that every item of them sunk ten times 1 This must be a mistake in Mr. Shandy; for Graaf wrote upon the pancreatic juice, and the parts of generation. deeper into it than the evils themselves;-but when Mrs. Wadman went round about by Namur to get at my uncle Toby's groin; and engaged him to attack the point of the advanced counterscarp, and, péle-méle with the Dutch, to take the counter-guard of St. Roch sword in hand,—and then, with tender notes playing upon his ear, led him, all bleeding, by the hand out of the trench, wiping her eyes as he was carried to his tent,-heaven! earth! sea!-all was lifted up,—the springs of nature rose above their levels, an angel of mercy sat beside him on the sofa,-his heart glowed with fire; and had he been worth a thousand, he had lost every heart of them to Mrs. Wadman. -And whereabouts, dear sir, quoth Mrs. Wadman, a little categorically, did you receive this sad blow? In asking this question, Mrs. Wadman gave a slight glance towards the waistband of my uncle Toby's red plush breeches, expecting naturally, as the shortest reply to it, that my uncle Toby would lay his fore-finger upon the place. It fell out otherwise, --for my uncle Toby having got his wound before the gate of St. Nicholas, in one of the traverses of the trench opposite to the salient angle of the demi-bastion of St. Roch, he could, at any time, stick a pin upon the identical spot of ground where he was standing when the stone struck him. This struck instantly upon my uncle Toby's sensorium;-and, with it, struck his large map of the town and citadel of Namur, and its environs, which he had purchased and pasted down upon a board, by the Corporal's aid, during his long illness:—it had lain, with other military lumber, in the garret ever since; and accordingly the Corporal was detached to the garret to fetch it. My uncle Toby measured off thirty toises, with Mrs. Wadman's scissors, from the returning angle before the gate of St. Nicholas; and with such a virgin modesty laid her finger upon the place, that the god dess of Decency, if then in being,-if not, 'twas her shade,-shook her head, and, with a finger wavering across her eyes,-forbade her to explain the mistake. Unhappy Mrs. Wadman! -For nothing can make this chapter go off with spirit but an apostrophe to thee; but my heart tells me, that in such a crisis an apostrophe is but an insult in disguise; and ere I would offer one to a woman in distress, let the chapter go to the devil; provided any damn'd critic in keeping will be but at the trouble to take it with him. CHAPTER CCCVI. My uncle Toby's map is carried down into the kitchen. CHAPTER CCCVII. -And here is the Maese,-and this is the Sambre, said the Corporal, pointing with his right hand extended a little towards the map, and his left upon Mrs. Bridget's shoulder,-but not the shoulder next him;—and this, said he, is the town of Namur,-and this the citadel,—and there lay the French,-and here lay his honour and myself;—and in this cursed trench, Mrs. Bridget, quoth the Corporal, taking her by the hand, did he receive the wound which crushed him so miserably here.In pronouncing which, he slightly pressed the back of her hand towards the part he felt for, and let it fall. -We thought, Mr. Trim, it had been more in the middle, said Mrs. Bridget. -That would have undone us for ever, said the Corporal. -And left my poor mistress undone too, said Bridget. The Corporal made no reply to the repartee, but by giving Mrs. Bridget a kiss. Come, come, said Bridget, holding the palm of her left hand parallel to the plane of the horizon, and sliding the fingers of the other over it, in a way which could not have been done, had there been the least wart or protuberance.- -Tis every syllable of it false, cried the Corporal, before she had half finished the sentence. -I know it to be fact, said Bridget, from credible witnesses. -Upon my honour, said the Corporal, laying his hand upon his heart, and blushing, as he spoke, with honest resentment,-'tis a story, Mrs. Bridget, as false as hell!-Not, said Bridget, interrupting him, that either I or my mistress care a halfpenny about it, whether it is so or no;-only that when one is married, one would choose to have such a thing by one at least. It was somewhat unfortunate for Mrs. Bridget, that she had begun the attack with her manual exercise; for the Corporal instantly * * * CHAPTER CCCVIII. It was like the momentary contest in the moist eyelids of an April morning, whether Bridget should laugh or cry.' She snatched up a rolling-pin,-'twas ten to one she had laughed. She laid it down, she cried; and had one single tear of them but tasted of bitterness, full sorrowful would the Corporal's heart have been that he had used the argument; but the Corporal understood the |