as the construction of them was a curve line approximating to a
cycloid--if not a cycloid itself.

My uncle Toby understood the nature of a parabola as well as any man
in England--but was not quite such a master of the cycloid;--he talked
however about it every day--the bridge went not forwards.--We'll ask
somebody about it, cried my uncle Toby to Trim.

Chapter 2.XIX.

When Trim came in and told my father, that Dr. Slop was in the kitchen,
and busy in making a bridge--my uncle Toby--the affair of the jack-boots
having just then raised a train of military ideas in his brain--took it
instantly for granted that Dr. Slop was making a model of the marquis
d'Hopital's bridge.--'tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle
Toby;--pray give my humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and tell him I
thank him heartily.

Had my uncle Toby's head been a Savoyard's box, and my father peeping
in all the time at one end of it--it could not have given him a more
distinct conception of the operations of my uncle Toby's imagination,
than what he had; so, notwithstanding the catapulta and battering-ram,
and his bitter imprecation about them, he was just beginning to
triumph--

When Trim's answer, in an instant, tore the laurel from his brows, and
twisted it to pieces.

Chapter 2.XX.

--This unfortunate draw-bridge of yours, quoth my father--God bless your
honour, cried Trim, 'tis a bridge for master's nose.--In bringing him
into the world with his vile instruments, he has crushed his nose,
Susannah says, as flat as a pancake to his face, and he is making a
false bridge with a piece of cotton and a thin piece of whalebone out of
Susannah's stays, to raise it up.

--Lead me, brother Toby, cried my father, to my room this instant.

Chapter 2.XXI.

From the first moment I sat down to write my life for the amusement of
the world, and my opinions for its instruction, has a cloud insensibly
been gathering over my father.--A tide of little evils and distresses
has been setting in against him.--Not one thing, as he observed himself,
has gone right: and now is the storm thicken'd and going to break, and
pour down full upon his head.

I enter upon this part of my story in the most pensive and melancholy
frame of mind that ever sympathetic breast was touched with.--My nerves
relax as I tell it.--Every line I write, I feel an abatement of the
quickness of my pulse, and of that careless alacrity with it, which
every day of my life pro