one to be repeated now--when the few animal spirits I was worth in the
world, and with which memory, fancy, and quick parts should have been
convey'd--were all dispersed, confused, confounded, scattered, and sent
to the devil.--

Here then was the time to have put a stop to this persecution against
him;--and tried an experiment at least--whether calmness and serenity
of mind in your sister, with a due attention, brother Toby, to her
evacuations and repletions--and the rest of her non-naturals, might not,
in a course of nine months gestation, have set all things to rights.--My
child was bereft of these!--What a teazing life did she lead herself,
and consequently her foetus too, with that nonsensical anxiety of hers
about lying-in in town? I thought my sister submitted with the greatest
patience, replied my uncle Toby--I never heard her utter one fretful
word about it.--She fumed inwardly, cried my father; and that, let me
tell you, brother, was ten times worse for the child--and then! what
battles did she fight with me, and what perpetual storms about the
midwife.--There she gave vent, said my uncle Toby.--Vent! cried my
father, looking up.

But what was all this, my dear Toby, to the injuries done us by my
child's coming head foremost into the world, when all I wished, in
this general wreck of his frame, was to have saved this little casket
unbroke, unrifled.--

With all my precautions, how was my system turned topside-turvy in the
womb with my child! his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a
pressure of 470 pounds avoirdupois weight acting so perpendicularly upon
its apex--that at this hour 'tis ninety per Cent. insurance, that the
fine net-work of the intellectual web be not rent and torn to a thousand
tatters.

--Still we could have done.--Fool, coxcomb, puppy--give him but a
Nose--Cripple, Dwarf, Driveller, Goosecap--(shape him as you will) the
door of fortune stands open--O Licetus! Licetus! had I been blest with a
foetus five inches long and a half, like thee--Fate might have done her
worst.

Still, brother Toby, there was one cast of the dye left for our child
after all--O Tristram! Tristram! Tristram!

We will send for Mr. Yorick, said my uncle Toby.

--You may send for whom you will, replied my father.

Chapter 2.LV.

What a rate have I gone on at, curvetting and striking it away, two up
and two down for three volumes (According to the preceding Editions.)
together, without looking once b