tenance,--by means of which (as
all the blood in his body seemed to rush into his face, as I told you)
he must have reddened, pictorically and scientifically speaking,
six whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural
colour:--any man, Madam, but my uncle Toby, who had observed this,
together with the violent knitting of my father's brows, and the
extravagant contortion of his body during the whole affair,--would have
concluded my father in a rage; and taking that for granted,--had he
been a lover of such kind of concord as arises from two such instruments
being put in exact tune,--he would instantly have skrew'd up his, to
the same pitch;--and then the devil and all had broke loose--the
whole piece, Madam, must have been played off like the sixth of Avison
Scarlatti--con furia,--like mad.--Grant me patience!--What has con
furia,--con strepito,--or any other hurly burly whatever to do with
harmony?

Any man, I say, Madam, but my uncle Toby, the benignity of whose heart
interpreted every motion of the body in the kindest sense the motion
would admit of, would have concluded my father angry, and blamed
him too. My uncle Toby blamed nothing but the taylor who cut the
pocket-hole;--so sitting still till my father had got his handkerchief
out of it, and looking all the time up in his face with inexpressible
good-will--my father, at length, went on as follows.

Chapter 1.L.

'What prodigious armies you had in Flanders!'

--Brother Toby, quoth my father, I do believe thee to be as honest a
man, and with as good and as upright a heart as ever God created;--nor
is it thy fault, if all the children which have been, may, can, shall,
will, or ought to be begotten, come with their heads foremost into
the world:--but believe me, dear Toby, the accidents which unavoidably
way-lay them, not only in the article of our begetting 'em--though
these, in my opinion, are well worth considering,--but the dangers and
difficulties our children are beset with, after they are got forth into
the world, are enow--little need is there to expose them to unnecessary
ones in their passage to it.--Are these dangers, quoth my uncle Toby,
laying his hand upon my father's knee, and looking up seriously in his
face for an answer,--are these dangers greater now o'days, brother,
than in times past? Brother Toby, answered my father, if a child was but
fairly begot, and born alive, and healthy, and the mother did well after
it,--our for