ing himself he let go his whip,--and in
attempting to save his whip betwixt his knee and his saddle's skirt, as
it slipped, he lost his stirrup,--in losing which he lost his seat;--and
in the multitude of all these losses (which, by the bye, shews what
little advantage there is in crossing) the unfortunate doctor lost his
presence of mind. So that without waiting for Obadiah's onset, he left
his pony to its destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, something in the
stile and manner of a pack of wool, and without any other consequence
from the fall, save that of being left (as it would have been) with the
broadest part of him sunk about twelve inches deep in the mire.

Obadiah pull'd off his cap twice to Dr. Slop;--once as he was
falling,--and then again when he saw him seated.--Ill-timed
complaisance;--had not the fellow better have stopped his horse, and
got off and help'd him?--Sir, he did all that his situation would
allow;--but the Momentum of the coach-horse was so great, that Obadiah
could not do it all at once; he rode in a circle three times round Dr.
Slop, before he could fully accomplish it any how;--and at the last,
when he did stop his beast, 'twas done with such an explosion of mud,
that Obadiah had better have been a league off. In short, never was a
Dr. Slop so beluted, and so transubstantiated, since that affair came
into fashion.

Chapter 1.XXXV.

When Dr. Slop entered the back parlour, where my father and my uncle
Toby were discoursing upon the nature of women,--it was hard to
determine whether Dr. Slop's figure, or Dr. Slop's presence, occasioned
more surprize to them; for as the accident happened so near the house,
as not to make it worth while for Obadiah to remount him,--Obadiah had
led him in as he was, unwiped, unappointed, unannealed, with all his
stains and blotches on him.--He stood like Hamlet's ghost, motionless
and speechless, for a full minute and a half at the parlour-door
(Obadiah still holding his hand) with all the majesty of mud. His hinder
parts, upon which he had received his fall, totally besmeared,--and in
every other part of him, blotched over in such a manner with Obadiah's
explosion, that you would have sworn (without mental reservation) that
every grain of it had taken effect.

Here was a fair opportunity for my uncle Toby to have triumphed over
my father in his turn;--for no mortal, who had beheld Dr. Slop in that
pickle, could have dissented from so much, at least, of my