ANY man, Madam, reasoning upwards, and observing the prodigious
suffusion of blood in my father’s countenance,—by means of which (as
all the blood in his body seemed to rush into his face, as I told you)
he must have reddened, pictorically and scientifically speaking, six
whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural
colour:—any man, Madam, but my uncle _Toby_, who had observed this,
together with the violent knitting of my father’s brows, and the
extravagant contortion of his body during the whole affair,—would have
concluded my father in a rage; and taking that for granted,—had he been
a lover of such kind of concord as arises from two such instruments
being put in exact tune,—he would instantly have skrew’d up his, to the
same pitch;—and then the devil and all had broke loose—the whole piece,
Madam, must have been played off like the sixth of Avison
Scarlatti—_con furia_,—like mad.—Grant me patience!——What has _con
furia_,——_con strepito_,——or any other hurly burly whatever to do with
harmony?
Any man, I say, Madam, but my uncle _Toby_, the benignity of whose
heart interpreted every motion of the body in the kindest sense the
motion would admit of, would have concluded my father angry, and blamed
him too. My uncle _Toby_ blamed nothing but the taylor who cut the
pocket-hole;——so sitting still till my father had got his handkerchief
out of it, and looking all the time up in his face with inexpressible
good-will——my father, at length, went on as follows.