TO my uncle Mr. _Toby Shandy_ do I stand indebted for the preceding
anecdote, to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher,
and much given to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft,
and heavily complained of the injury; but once more particularly, as my
uncle _Toby_ well remember’d, upon his observing a most unaccountable
obliquity, (as he call’d it) in my manner of setting up my top, and
justifying the principles upon which I had done it,—the old gentleman
shook his head, and in a tone more expressive by half of sorrow than
reproach,—he said his heart all along foreboded, and he saw it verified
in this, and from a thousand other observations he had made upon me,
That I should neither think nor act like any other man’s child:—_But
alas!_ continued he, shaking his head a second time, and wiping away a
tear which was trickling down his cheeks, _My Tristram’s misfortunes
began nine months before ever he came into the world._
—My mother, who was sitting by, look’d up, but she knew no more than
her backside what my father meant,—but my uncle, Mr. _Toby Shandy_, who
had been often informed of the affair,—understood him very well.