ced so very slow with his work, and I began
to live and get forwards at such a rate, that if an event had not
happened,--which, when we get to it, if it can be told with decency,
shall not be concealed a moment from the reader--I verily believe, I had
put by my father, and left him drawing a sundial, for no better purpose
than to be buried under ground.

Chapter 3.XVII.

--'Twas nothing,--I did not lose two drops of blood by it--'twas not
worth calling in a surgeon, had he lived next door to us--thousands
suffer by choice, what I did by accident.--Doctor Slop made ten times
more of it, than there was occasion:--some men rise, by the art of
hanging great weights upon small wires,--and I am this day (August
the 10th, 1761) paying part of the price of this man's reputation.--O
'twould provoke a stone, to see how things are carried on in this
world!--The chamber-maid had left no .......... under the bed:--Cannot
you contrive, master, quoth Susannah, lifting up the sash with one
hand, as she spoke, and helping me up into the window-seat with
the other,--cannot you manage, my dear, for a single time,
to..................?

I was five years old.--Susannah did not consider that nothing was well
hung in our family,--so slap came the sash down like lightning upon
us;--Nothing is left,--cried Susannah,--nothing is left--for me, but to
run my country.--My uncle Toby's house was a much kinder sanctuary; and
so Susannah fled to it.

Chapter 3.XVIII.

When Susannah told the corporal the misadventure of the sash, with
all the circumstances which attended the murder of me,--(as she called
it,)--the blood forsook his cheeks,--all accessaries in murder being
principals,--Trim's conscience told him he was as much to blame as
Susannah,--and if the doctrine had been true, my uncle Toby had as much
of the bloodshed to answer for to heaven, as either of 'em;--so that
neither reason or instinct, separate or together, could possibly have
guided Susannah's steps to so proper an asylum. It is in vain to leave
this to the Reader's imagination:--to form any kind of hypothesis that
will render these propositions feasible, he must cudgel his brains
sore,--and to do it without,--he must have such brains as no reader ever
had before him.--Why should I put them either to trial or to torture?
'Tis my own affair: I'll explain it myself.

Chapter 3.XIX.

'Tis a pity, Trim, said my uncle Toby, resting with his hand upon the
corporal's s