art--or whatever other creature she models, be it but an
asse'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 exigences 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, or 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 ever
better: she had formed him of the best and kindliest clay--had temper'd
it with her own milk, and breathed into it the sweetest spirit--she had
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 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 4.LXXXII.

Mrs. Bridget had pawn'd all the little stock of honour a poor
chamber-maid was 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 make love to her--'And I'll 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 stake