THOUGH man is of all others the most curious vehicle, said my father,
yet at the same time ’tis of so slight a frame, and so totteringly put
together, that the sudden jerks and hard jostlings it unavoidably meets
with in this rugged journey, would overset and tear it to pieces a
dozen times a day——was it not, brother _Toby_, that there is a secret
spring within us.—Which spring, said my uncle _Toby_, I take to be
Religion.—Will that set my child’s nose on? cried my father, letting go
his finger, and striking one hand against the other.——It makes every
thing straight for us, answered my uncle _Toby_.——Figuratively
speaking, dear _Toby_, it may, for aught I know, said my father; but
the spring I am speaking of, is that great and elastic power within us
of counterbalancing evil, which, like a secret spring in a well-ordered
machine, though it can’t prevent the shock——at least it imposes upon
our sense of it.
Now, my dear brother, said my father, replacing his fore-finger, as he
was coming closer to the point——had my child arrived safe into the
world, unmartyr’d in that precious part of him—fanciful and extravagant
as I may appear to the world in my opinion of christian names, and of
that magic bias which good or bad names irresistibly impress upon our
characters and conducts—Heaven is witness! that in the warmest
transports of my wishes for the prosperity of my child, I never once
wished to crown his head with more glory and honour than what GEORGE or
EDWARD would have spread around it.
But alas! continued my father, as the greatest evil has befallen him——I
must counteract and undo it with the greatest good.
He shall be christened _Trismegistus_, brother.