re I took
a trip to Navarre,--and the indented curve B. which is the short airing
when I was there with the Lady Baussiere and her page,--I have not taken
the least frisk of a digression, till John de la Casse's devils led me
the round you see marked D.--for as for C C C C C they are nothing but
parentheses, and the common ins and outs incident to the lives of
the greatest ministers of state; and when compared with what men have
done,--or with my own transgressions at the letters ABD--they vanish
into nothing.

In this last volume I have done better still--for from the end of Le
Fever's episode, to the beginning of my uncle Toby's campaigns,--I have
scarce stepped a yard out of my way.

If I mend at this rate, it is not impossible--by the good leave of
his grace of Benevento's devils--but I may arrive hereafter at the
excellency of going on even thus:

(straight line across the page)

which is a line drawn as straight as I could draw it, by a
writing-master's ruler (borrowed for that purpose), turning neither to
the right hand or to the left.

This right line,--the path-way for Christians to walk in! say divines--

--The emblem of moral rectitude! says Cicero--

--The best line! say cabbage planters--is the shortest line, says
Archimedes, which can be drawn from one given point to another.--

I wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart, in your next
birth-day suits!

--What a journey!

Pray can you tell me,--that is, without anger, before I write my chapter
upon straight lines--by what mistake--who told them so--or how it has
come to pass, that your men of wit and genius have all along confounded
this line, with the line of Gravitation?

Chapter 3.LXXXIV.

No--I think, I said, I would write two volumes every year, provided the
vile cough which then tormented me, and which to this hour I dread worse
than the devil, would but give me leave--and in another place--(but
where, I can't recollect now) speaking of my book as a machine, and
laying my pen and ruler down cross-wise upon the table, in order to gain
the greater credit to it--I swore it should be kept a going at that rate
these forty years, if it pleased but the fountain of life to bless me so
long with health and good spirits.

Now as for my spirits, little have I to lay to their charge--nay so very
little (unless the mounting me upon a long stick and playing the fool
with me nineteen hours out of the twenty-four, be accusations) that o