h another officer
"about a goose" resulted in a duel. Roger Sterne was run through the
body. He never recovered from the wound, and though in this harsh
world he drew his breath {301} in pain a little longer, he died in
Jamaica of fever, which found his enfeebled frame a ready victim. One
of the few pleasing characteristics in Laurence Sterne's nature is his
affectionate memory of his father; one of the most pleasing passages of
all his writings is that in which he describes him. "My father was a
little, smart man, active to the last degree in all exercises, most
patient of fatigue and disappointment, of which it had pleased God to
give him full measure. He was, in his temper, somewhat rapid and
hasty"--hence, no doubt, the speaking of hot words and the spilling of
hot blood over that ill-omened goose--"but of a kindly, sweet
disposition, void of all design, and so innocent in his intentions that
he suspected no one, so that you might have cheated him ten times a day
if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose."

[Sidenote: 1713-1768--"Tristram Shandy"]

Through Halifax School and Cambridge sizarship Laurence Sterne passed,
by the patronage of his pluralist uncle, Jacques Sterne, into holy
orders and the living of Sutton-on-the-Forest, and so into twenty years
of almost complete obscurity. We know that he married, that he
preached, played the fiddle, fished, hunted, and read, and that is
about all we know. Then quite suddenly, in 1759, the lazy, lounging,
most eccentric, and ill-chosen clergyman enraptured London by the
publication of the first two volumes of "Tristram Shandy."

The author of "Tristram Shandy" came to town, and was received with
more than Roman triumph. Wealth, wit, genius, nobility, thronged his
door, sought his friendship, proffered favors. Sterne revelled in this
new life. London offered him a cup of the most intoxicating quality,
and he drank and drank again of its sparkling fountain without ever
quenching his thirst for popularity, for flattery, for success.
Flattery, popularity, success--all three he had in plenty for eight
resplendent years. Volume after volume of "Tristram Shandy" wooed and
won public applause. Sterne travelled abroad and found the same
adulation in other capitals of Europe that he had enjoyed in London.
When the popularity of "Shandy" {302} appeared to be on the wane, and
the fame of its author to be dwindling, he whipped it up again with the
"Sentimental Jo