ve of the original purchase-money, which was eight hundred
pounds--it had cost the family eight hundred pounds more in a law-suit
about fifteen years before--besides the Lord knows what trouble and
vexation.

It had been moreover in possession of the Shandy-family ever since the
middle of the last century; and though it lay full in view before the
house, bounded on one extremity by the water-mill, and on the other
by the projected wind-mill spoken of above--and for all these reasons
seemed to have the fairest title of any part of the estate to the care
and protection of the family--yet by an unaccountable fatality, common
to men, as well as the ground they tread on--it had all along most
shamefully been overlook'd; and to speak the truth of it, had suffered
so much by it, that it would have made any man's heart have bled
(Obadiah said) who understood the value of the land, to have rode over
it, and only seen the condition it was in.

However, as neither the purchasing this tract of ground--nor indeed the
placing of it where it lay, were either of them, properly speaking, of
my father's doing--he had never thought himself any way concerned in
the affair--till the fifteen years before, when the breaking out of
that cursed law-suit mentioned above (and which had arose about its
boundaries)--which being altogether my father's own act and deed, it
naturally awakened every other argument in its favour, and upon summing
them all up together, he saw, not merely in interest, but in honour, he
was bound to do something for it--and that now or never was the time.

I think there must certainly have been a mixture of ill-luck in it, that
the reasons on both sides should happen to be so equally balanced
by each other; for though my father weigh'd them in all humours
and conditions--spent many an anxious hour in the most profound and
abstracted meditation upon what was best to be done--reading books of
farming one day--books of travels another--laying aside all passion
whatever--viewing the arguments on both sides in all their lights and
circumstances--communing every day with my uncle Toby--arguing
with Yorick, and talking over the whole affair of the Ox-moor with
Obadiah--yet nothing in all that time appeared so strongly in behalf of
the one, which was not either strictly applicable to the other, or at
least so far counterbalanced by some consideration of equal weight, as
to keep the scales even.

For to be sure, with proper hel