a great
estate, or could anyhow contrive to be called up to public charges and
employments of dignity and power; but that is not my case; and therefore
every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it; for
which cause I affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds that
ever was made; for I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew
breath in it, to this--I can now scarce draw it at all, for an asthma I
got in skating against the wind in Flanders--I have been the continual
sport of what the world calls Fortune, and though I will not wrong her
by saying she has ever made me feel the weight of any great and signal
evil, yet with all the good temper in the world, I affirm it of her,
that in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she
could get fairly at me, the ungracious duchess has pelted me with a set
of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small hero
sustained.

_II_

"I wonder what's all that noise and running backwards and forwards for
above stairs?" quoth my father, addressing himself after an hour and a
half's silence to my Uncle Toby, who, you must know, was sitting on the
opposite side of the fire, smoking his pipe all the time in mute
contemplation of a new pair of black plush breeches which he had got on.
"What can they be doing, brother?" quoth my father; "We can scarce hear
ourselves talk."

"I think," replied my uncle Toby, taking his pipe from his mouth and
striking the head of it two or three times upon the nail of his left
thumb as he began his sentence; "I think," says he--but to enter rightly
into my Uncle Toby's sentiments upon this matter, you must be made to
enter just a little into his character.

_III_

The wound in my Uncle Toby's groin, which he received at the siege of
Namur, rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought expedient he
should return to England, in order, if possible, to be set to rights.

He was four years totally confined, partly to his bed and all of it to
his room; and in the course of his cure, which was all that time in
hand, suffered unspeakable misery.

My father at that time was just beginning business in London, and had
taken a house, and as the truest friendship and cordiality subsisted
between the two brothers, and as my father thought my Uncle Toby could
nowhere be so well nursed and taken care of as in his own house, he
assigned him the very best apartment in it. And what was a much m