s he used,
to make his ass (meaning his body) leave off kicking.'

It pleased my father well; it was not only a laconick way of
expressing--but of libelling, at the same time, the desires and
appetites of the lower part of us; so that for many years of my father's
life, 'twas his constant mode of expression--he never used the word
passions once--but ass always instead of them--So that he might be said
truly, to have been upon the bones, or the back of his own ass, or else
of some other man's, during all that time.

I must here observe to you the difference betwixt My father's ass and my
hobby-horse--in order to keep characters as separate as may be, in our
fancies as we go along.

For my hobby-horse, if you recollect a little, is no way a vicious
beast; he has scarce one hair or lineament of the ass about him--'Tis
the sporting little filly-folly which carries you out for the present
hour--a maggot, a butterfly, a picture, a fiddlestick--an uncle Toby's
siege--or an any thing, which a man makes a shift to get a-stride on, to
canter it away from the cares and solicitudes of life--'Tis as useful
a beast as is in the whole creation--nor do I really see how the world
could do without it--

--But for my father's ass--oh! mount him--mount him--mount him--(that's
three times, is it not?)--mount him not:--'tis a beast concupiscent--and
foul befal the man, who does not hinder him from kicking.

Chapter 4.LVI.

Well! dear brother Toby, said my father, upon his first seeing him after
he fell in love--and how goes it with your Asse?

Now my uncle Toby thinking more of the part where he had had the
blister, than of Hilarion's metaphor--and our preconceptions having (you
know) as great a power over the sounds of words as the shapes of things,
he had imagined, that my father, who was not very ceremonious in his
choice of words, had enquired after the part by its proper name: so
notwithstanding my mother, doctor Slop, and Mr. Yorick, were sitting in
the parlour, he thought it rather civil to conform to the term my father
had made use of than not. When a man is hemm'd in by two indecorums, and
must commit one of 'em--I always observe--let him chuse which he will,
the world will blame him--so I should not be astonished if it blames my
uncle Toby.

My A..e, quoth my uncle Toby, is much better--brother Shandy--My father
had formed great expectations from his Asse in this onset; and would
have brought him on again; but doctor