y, said my uncle Toby, leaning upon Yorick, as he and my father
were helping him leisurely down the stairs--don't be terrified, madam,
this stair-case conversation is not so long as the last--And pray,
Yorick, said my uncle Toby, which way is this said affair of Tristram
at length settled by these learned men? Very satisfactorily, replied
Yorick; no mortal, Sir, has any concern with it--for Mrs. Shandy the
mother is nothing at all a-kin to him--and as the mother's is the surest
side--Mr. Shandy, in course is still less than nothing--In short, he is
not as much a-kin to him, Sir, as I am.--

--That may well be, said my father, shaking his head.

--Let the learned say what they will, there must certainly, quoth my
uncle Toby, have been some sort of consanguinity betwixt the duchess of
Suffolk and her son.

The vulgar are of the same opinion, quoth Yorick, to this hour.

Chapter 2.LXVI.

Though my father was hugely tickled with the subtleties of these learned
discourses--'twas still but like the anointing of a broken bone--The
moment he got home, the weight of his afflictions returned upon him but
so much the heavier, as is ever the case when the staff we lean on
slips from under us.--He became pensive--walked frequently forth to
the fish-pond--let down one loop of his hat--sigh'd often--forbore to
snap--and, as the hasty sparks of temper, which occasion snapping, so
much assist perspiration and digestion, as Hippocrates tells us--he had
certainly fallen ill with the extinction of them, had not his thoughts
been critically drawn off, and his health rescued by a fresh train of
disquietudes left him, with a legacy of a thousand pounds, by my aunt
Dinah.

My father had scarce read the letter, when taking the thing by the right
end, he instantly began to plague and puzzle his head how to lay it out
mostly to the honour of his family.--A hundred-and-fifty odd projects
took possession of his brains by turns--he would do this, and that and
t'other--He would go to Rome--he would go to law--he would buy stock--he
would buy John Hobson's farm--he would new fore front his house, and add
a new wing to make it even--There was a fine water-mill on this side,
and he would build a wind-mill on the other side of the river in full
view to answer it--But above all things in the world, he would inclose
the great Ox-moor, and send out my brother Bobby immediately upon his
travels.

But as the sum was finite, and consequently could