atred, in that--Sentiment half a yard
higher--and Nonsense--no, Madam,--not there--I mean at the part I am now
pointing to with my forefinger--how can we help ourselves?

Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever
soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle Toby was the worst
fitted, to have push'd his researches, thro' such a contention of
feelings; and he had infallibly let them all run on, as we do
worse matters, to see what they would turn out--had not Bridget's
pre-notification of them to Susannah, and Susannah's repeated
manifestoes thereupon to all the world, made it necessary for my uncle
Toby to look into the affair.

Chapter 4.XXIX.

Why weavers, gardeners, and gladiators--or a man with a pined leg
(proceeding from some ailment in the foot)--should ever have had some
tender nymph breaking her heart in secret for them, are points well and
duly settled and accounted for, by ancient and modern physiologists.

A water-drinker, provided he is a profess'd one, and does it without
fraud or covin, is precisely in the same predicament: not that, at first
sight, there is any consequence, or show of logic in it, 'That a rill of
cold water dribbling through my inward parts, should light up a torch in
my Jenny's--'

--The proposition does not strike one; on the contrary, it seems to run
opposite to the natural workings of causes and effects--

But it shews the weakness and imbecility of human reason.

--'And in perfect good health with it?'

--The most perfect,--Madam, that friendship herself could wish me--

'And drink nothing!--nothing but water?'

--Impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the flood-gates of
the brain--see how they give way--!

In swims Curiosity, beckoning to her damsels to follow--they dive into
the center of the current--

Fancy sits musing upon the bank, and with her eyes following the stream,
turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bow-sprits--And Desire, with
vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as they swim by
her, with the other--

O ye water drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain, that ye
have so often governed and turn'd this world about like a
mill-wheel--grinding the faces of the impotent--bepowdering their
ribs--bepeppering their noses, and changing sometimes even the very
frame and face of nature--

If I was you, quoth Yorick, I would drink more water, Eugenius--And, if
I was you, Yorick, replied Eugenius, so