ps, in the hands of some people, tho' the
Ox-moor would undoubtedly have made a different appearance in the world
from what it did, or ever could do in the condition it lay--yet every
tittle of this was true, with regard to my brother Bobby--let Obadiah
say what he would.--

In point of interest--the contest, I own, at first sight, did not appear
so undecisive betwixt them; for whenever my father took pen and ink
in hand, and set about calculating the simple expence of paring and
burning, and fencing in the Ox-moor, &c. &c.--with the certain profit it
would bring him in return--the latter turned out so prodigiously in his
way of working the account, that you would have sworn the Ox-moor would
have carried all before it. For it was plain he should reap a hundred
lasts of rape, at twenty pounds a last, the very first year--besides an
excellent crop of wheat the year following--and the year after that,
to speak within bounds, a hundred--but in all likelihood, a hundred and
fifty--if not two hundred quarters of pease and beans--besides potatoes
without end.--But then, to think he was all this while breeding up my
brother, like a hog to eat them--knocked all on the head again, and
generally left the old gentleman in such a state of suspense--that, as
he often declared to my uncle Toby--he knew no more than his heels what
to do.

No body, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it
is to have a man's mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength,
both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time:
for to say nothing of the havock, which by a certain consequence is
unavoidably made by it all over the finer system of the nerves, which
you know convey the animal spirits and more subtle juices from the heart
to the head, and so on--it is not to be told in what a degree such a
wayward kind of friction works upon the more gross and solid parts,
wasting the fat and impairing the strength of a man every time as it
goes backwards and forwards.

My father had certainly sunk under this evil, as certainly as he had
done under that of my Christian Name--had he not been rescued out of
it, as he was out of that, by a fresh evil--the misfortune of my brother
Bobby's death.

What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side?--from
sorrow to sorrow?--to button up one cause of vexation--and unbutton
another?

Chapter 2.LXVII.

From this moment I am to be considered as heir-apparent