“—WHAT prodigious armies you had in _Flanders!_”—
Brother _Toby_, replied my father, taking his wig from off his head
with his right hand, and with his _left_ pulling out a striped _India_
handkerchief from his right coat pocket, in order to rub his head, as
he argued the point with my uncle _Toby._——
——Now, in this I think my father was much to blame; and I will give you
my reasons for it.
Matters of no more seeming consequence in themselves than, “_Whether my
father should have taken off his wig with his right hand or with his
left_,”—have divided the greatest kingdoms, and made the crowns of the
monarchs who governed them, to totter upon their heads.——But need I
tell you, Sir, that the circumstances with which every thing in this
world is begirt, give every thing in this world its size and shape!—and
by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to
be, what it is—great—little—good—bad—indifferent or not indifferent,
just as the case happens?
As my father’s _India_ handkerchief was in his right coat pocket, he
should by no means have suffered his right hand to have got engaged: on
the contrary, instead of taking off his wig with it, as he did, he
ought to have committed that entirely to the left; and then, when the
natural exigency my father was under of rubbing his head, called out
for his handkerchief, he would have had nothing in the world to have
done, but to have put his right hand into his right coat pocket and
taken it out;——which he might have done without any violence, or the
least ungraceful twist in any one tendon or muscle of his whole body.
In this case, (unless, indeed, my father had been resolved to make a
fool of himself by holding the wig stiff in his left hand——or by making
some nonsensical angle or other at his elbow-joint, or armpit)—his
whole attitude had been easy—natural—unforced: _Reynolds_ himself, as
great and gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he sat.
Now as my father managed this matter,—consider what a devil of a figure
my father made of himself.
In the latter end of Queen _Anne_’s reign, and in the beginning of the
reign of King _George_ the first—“_Coat pockets were cut very low down
in the skirt._”—I need say no more—the father of mischief, had he been
hammering at it a month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for
one in my father’s situation.