Namur, rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought expedient he
should return to England, in order, if possible, to be set to rights.

He was four years totally confined,--part of it to his bed, and all of
it to his room: and in the course of his cure, which was all that
time in hand, suffer'd unspeakable miseries,--owing to a succession of
exfoliations from the os pubis, and the outward edge of that part of the
coxendix called the os illium,--both which bones were dismally crush'd,
as much by the irregularity of the stone, which I told you was broke off
the parapet,--as by its size,--(tho' it was pretty large) which inclined
the surgeon all along to think, that the great injury which it had
done my uncle Toby's groin, was more owing to the gravity of the stone
itself, than to the projectile force of it,--which he would often tell
him was a great happiness.

My father at that time was just beginning business in London, and had
taken a house;--and as the truest friendship and cordiality subsisted
between the two brothers,--and that my father thought my uncle Toby
could no where be so well nursed and taken care of as in his own
house,--he assign'd him the very best apartment in it.--And what was a
much more sincere mark of his affection still, he would never suffer a
friend or an acquaintance to step into the house on any occasion, but
he would take him by the hand, and lead him up stairs to see his brother
Toby, and chat an hour by his bed-side.

The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it;--my uncle's
visitors at least thought so, and in their daily calls upon him, from
the courtesy arising out of that belief, they would frequently turn the
discourse to that subject,--and from that subject the discourse would
generally roll on to the siege itself.

These conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle Toby received
great relief from them, and would have received much more, but that they
brought him into some unforeseen perplexities, which, for three months
together, retarded his cure greatly; and if he had not hit upon an
expedient to extricate himself out of them, I verily believe they would
have laid him in his grave.

What these perplexities of my uncle Toby were,--'tis impossible for you
to guess;--if you could,--I should blush; not as a relation,--not as a
man,--nor even as a woman,--but I should blush as an author; inasmuch
as I set no small store by myself upon this very account, that m