ndy, said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her
cambrick handkerchief to her left eye, as she approach'd the door of my
uncle Toby's sentry-box--a mote--or sand--or something--I know not what,
has got into this eye of mine--do look into it--it is not in the white--

In saying which, Mrs. Wadman edged herself close in beside my uncle
Toby, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she gave
him an opportunity of doing it without rising up--Do look into it--said
she.

Honest soul! thou didst look into it with as much innocency of heart,
as ever child look'd into a raree-shew-box; and 'twere as much a sin to
have hurt thee.

--If a man will be peeping of his own accord into things of that
nature--I've nothing to say to it--

My uncle Toby never did: and I will answer for him, that he would have
sat quietly upon a sofa from June to January (which, you know, takes
in both the hot and cold months), with an eye as fine as the Thracian
Rodope's (Rodope Thracia tam inevitabili fascino instructa, tam exacte
oculus intuens attraxit, ut si in illam quis incidisset, fieri non
posset, quin caperetur.--I know not who.) besides him, without being
able to tell, whether it was a black or blue one.

The difficulty was to get my uncle Toby, to look at one at all.

'Tis surmounted. And

I see him yonder with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes
falling out of it--looking--and looking--then rubbing his eyes--and
looking again, with twice the good-nature that ever Galileo look'd for a
spot in the sun.

--In vain! for by all the powers which animate the organ--Widow Wadman's
left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right--there is neither
mote, or sand, or dust, or chaff, or speck, or particle of opake matter
floating in it--There is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! but one
lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part of it, in
all directions, into thine--

--If thou lookest, uncle Toby, in search of this mote one moment
longer,--thou art undone.

Chapter 4.XLIX.

An eye is for all the world exactly like a cannon, in this respect; That
it is not so much the eye or the cannon, in themselves, as it is the
carriage of the eye--and the carriage of the cannon, by which both the
one and the other are enabled to do so much execution. I don't think the
comparison a bad one: However, as 'tis made and placed at the head of
the chapter, as much for use as ornament, all I desire in return, is,
that when