ct upon my uncle Toby without the disgrace.

What changes this produced, will be read in its proper place: all that
is needful to be added to the anecdote, is this--That whatever effect it
had upon my uncle Toby,--it had a vile effect upon the house;--and if my
uncle Toby had not smoaked it down as he did, it might have had a vile
effect upon my father too.

Chapter 3.LXXX.

--'Twill come out of itself by and bye.--All I contend for is, that I am
not obliged to set out with a definition of what love is; and so long
as I can go on with my story intelligibly, with the help of the word
itself, without any other idea to it, than what I have in common with
the rest of the world, why should I differ from it a moment before the
time?--When I can get on no further,--and find myself entangled on
all sides of this mystic labyrinth,--my Opinion will then come in, in
course,--and lead me out.

At present, I hope I shall be sufficiently understood, in telling the
reader, my uncle Toby fell in love:

--Not that the phrase is at all to my liking: for to say a man is fallen
in love,--or that he is deeply in love,--or up to the ears in love,--and
sometimes even over head and ears in it,--carries an idiomatical kind of
implication, that love is a thing below a man:--this is recurring again
to Plato's opinion, which, with all his divinityship,--I hold to be
damnable and heretical:--and so much for that.

Let love therefore be what it will,--my uncle Toby fell into it.

--And possibly, gentle reader, with such a temptation--so wouldst thou:
For never did thy eyes behold, or thy concupiscence covet any thing in
this world, more concupiscible than widow Wadman.

Chapter 3.LXXXI.

To conceive this right,--call for pen and ink--here's paper ready to
your hand.--Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind--as like your
mistress as you can--as unlike your wife as your conscience will let
you--'tis all one to me--please but your own fancy in it.

(blank page)

--Was ever any thing in Nature so sweet!--so exquisite!

--Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle Toby resist it?

Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy covers,
which Malice will not blacken, and which Ignorance cannot misrepresent.

Chapter 3.LXXXII.

As Susannah was informed by an express from Mrs. Bridget, of my
uncle Toby's falling in love with her mistress fifteen days before it
happened,--the contents of which express, Susannah commun