not do every
thing--and in truth very few of these to any purpose--of all the
projects which offered themselves upon this occasion, the two last
seemed to make the deepest impression; and he would infallibly have
determined upon both at once, but for the small inconvenience hinted at
above, which absolutely put him under a necessity of deciding in favour
either of the one or the other.

This was not altogether so easy to be done; for though 'tis certain
my father had long before set his heart upon this necessary part of my
brother's education, and like a prudent man had actually determined to
carry it into execution, with the first money that returned from the
second creation of actions in the Missisippi-scheme, in which he was an
adventurer--yet the Ox-moor, which was a fine, large, whinny, undrained,
unimproved common, belonging to the Shandy-estate, had almost as old
a claim upon him: he had long and affectionately set his heart upon
turning it likewise to some account.

But having never hitherto been pressed with such a conjuncture of
things, as made it necessary to settle either the priority or justice of
their claims--like a wise man he had refrained entering into any nice
or critical examination about them: so that upon the dismission of every
other project at this crisis--the two old projects, the Ox-moor and
my Brother, divided him again; and so equal a match were they for
each other, as to become the occasion of no small contest in the old
gentleman's mind--which of the two should be set o'going first.

--People may laugh as they will--but the case was this.

It had ever been the custom of the family, and by length of time was
almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of it
should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts before
marriage--not only for the sake of bettering his own private parts, by
the benefit of exercise and change of so much air--but simply for the
mere delectation of his fancy, by the feather put into his cap, of
having been abroad--tantum valet, my father would say, quantum sonat.

Now as this was a reasonable, and in course a most christian
indulgence--to deprive him of it, without why or wherefore--and thereby
make an example of him, as the first Shandy unwhirl'd about Europe in a
post-chaise, and only because he was a heavy lad--would be using him ten
times worse than a Turk.

On the other hand, the case of the Ox-moor was full as hard.

Exclusi