which Trim had made in my uncle Toby's mind was too favorable a
crisis to be let slipt.

The attack was determined upon: it was facilitated still more by my
uncle Toby's having ordered the Corporal to wheel off the pioneer's
shovel, the spade, the pickax, the piquets, and other military stores
which lay scattered upon the ground where Dunkirk stood. The Corporal
had marched; the field was clear.

Now, consider, sir, what nonsense it is, either in fighting or
writing, or anything else (whether in rime to it or not) which a man
has occasion to do, to act by plan: for if ever Plan, independent of
all circumstances, deserved registering in letters of gold (I mean in
the archives of Gotham) it was certainly the Plan of Mrs. Wadman's
attack of my uncle Toby in his sentry-box, by Plan. Now, the plan
hanging up in it at this juncture, being the Plan of Dunkirk, and the
tale of Dunkirk a tale of relaxation, it opposed every impression she
could make: and, besides, could she have gone upon it, the maneuver of
fingers and hands in the attack of the sentry-box was so outdone by
that of the fair Beguine's, in Trim's story, that just then, that
particular attack, however successful before, became the most
heartless attack that could be made.

Oh! let woman alone for this. Mrs. Wadman had scarce opened the
wicker-gate, when her genius sported with the change of circumstances.

She formed a new attack in a moment.

"I am half distracted, Captain Shandy," said Mrs. Wadman, holding up
her cambric handkerchief to her left eye, as she approached 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 looked into a raree show-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
Rhodope's beside him, without being able to tell w