——WHAT can they be doing? brother, said my father.—I think, replied my
uncle _Toby_,—taking, as I told you, his pipe from his mouth, and
striking the ashes out of it as he began his sentence;——I think,
replied he,—it would not be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell.
Pray, what’s all that racket over our heads, _Obadiah?_——quoth my
father;——my brother and I can scarce hear ourselves speak.
Sir, answered _Obadiah_, making a bow towards his left shoulder,—my
Mistress is taken very badly.—And where’s _Susannah_ running down the
garden there, as if they were going to ravish her?——Sir, she is running
the shortest cut into the town, replied _Obadiah_, to fetch the old
midwife.—Then saddle a horse, quoth my father, and do you go directly
for Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife, with all our services,——and let him
know your mistress is fallen into labour——and that I desire he will
return with you with all speed.
It is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to my uncle
_Toby_, as _Obadiah_ shut the door,——as there is so expert an operator
as Dr. _Slop_ so near,—that my wife should persist to the very last in
this obstinate humour of hers, in trusting the life of my child, who
has had one misfortune already, to the ignorance of an old woman;——and
not only the life of my child, brother,——but her own life, and with it
the lives of all the children I might, peradventure, have begot out of
her hereafter.
Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle _Toby_, my sister does it to save the
expence:—A pudding’s end,—replied my father,——the Doctor must be paid
the same for inaction as action,—if not better,—to keep him in temper.
——Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth my uncle
_Toby_, in the simplicity of his heart,—but MODESTY.—My sister, I dare
say, added he, does not care to let a man come so near her ****. I will
not say whether my uncle _Toby_ had completed the sentence or not;—’tis
for his advantage to suppose he had,——as, I think, he could have added
no ONE WORD which would have improved it.
If, on the contrary, my uncle _Toby_ had not fully arrived at the
period’s end—then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of
my father’s tobacco-pipe for one of the neatest examples of that
ornamental figure in oratory, which Rhetoricians stile the
_Aposiopesis._——Just Heaven! how does the _Poco piu_ and the _Poco
meno_ of the _Italian_ artists;—the insensible MORE OR LESS, determine
the precise line of beauty in the sentence, as well as in the statue!
How do the slight touches of the chisel, the pencil, the pen, the
fiddle-stick, _et cætera_,—give the true swell, which gives the true
pleasure!—O my countrymen:—be nice; be cautious of your language; and
never, O! never let it be forgotten upon what small particles your
eloquence and your fame depend.
——“My sister, mayhap,” quoth my uncle _Toby_, “does not choose to let a
man come so near her ****” Make this dash,—’tis an Aposiopesis,—Take
the dash away, and write _Backside_,—’tis Bawdy.—Scratch Backside out,
and put _Cover’d way_ in, ’tis a Metaphor;—and, I dare say, as
fortification ran so much in my uncle _Toby_’s head, that if he had
been left to have added one word to the sentence,——that word was it.
But whether that was the case or not the case;—or whether the snapping
of my father’s tobacco-pipe, so critically, happened through accident
or anger, will be seen in due time.