s 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 look'd into his
hand--there was such a plainness and simplicity in his playing out what
trumps he had--with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the ten-ace--and
so naked and defenceless did he sit upon the same sopha with widow
Wadman, that a generous heart would have wept to have won the game of
him.

Let us drop the metaphor.

Chapter 4.LXXXIII.

--And the story too--if you please: for though I have all along been
hastening towards this part of it, with so much earnest desire, as
well knowing it to be the choicest morsel of what I had to offer to the
world, yet now that I am got to it, any one is welcome to take my pen,
and go on with the story for me that will--I see the difficulties of the
descriptions I'm going to give--and feel my want of powers.

It is one comfort at least to me, that I lost some fourscore ounces
of blood this week in a most uncritical fever which attacked me at the
beginning of this chapter; so that I have still some hopes remaining,
it may be more in the serous or globular parts of the blood, than in the
subtile aura of the brain--be it which it will--an Invocation can do no
hurt--and I leave the affair entirely to the invoked, to inspire or to
inject me according as he sees good.

The Invocation.

Gentle Spirit of sweetest humour, who erst did sit upon the easy pen of
my beloved Cervantes; Thou who glidedst daily through his lattice, and
turned'st the twilight of his prison into noon-day brightness by thy
presence--tinged'st his little urn of water with heaven-sent nectar, and
all the time he wrote of Sancho and his master, didst cast thy mystic
mantle o'er his wither'd stump (He lost his hand at the battle of
Lepanto.), and wide extended it to all the evils of his life--

--Turn in hither, I beseech thee!--behold these breeches!--they are all
I have in world--that piteous rent was given them at Lyons--

My shirts! see what a deadly schism has happen'd amongst 'em--for the
laps are in Lombardy, and the rest of 'em here--I never had but six,
and a cunning gypsey of a laundress at Milan cut me off the fore-laps of
five--To do her justice, she did it with some consideration--for I was
returning out of Ital