IT is in vain longer, said my father, addressing himself as much to
_Ernulphus_’s curse, which was laid upon the corner of the
chimney-piece——as to my uncle _Toby_ who sat under it——it is in vain
longer, said my father, in the most querulous monotony imaginable, to
struggle as I have done against this most uncomfortable of human
persuasions——I see it plainly, that either for my own sins, brother
_Toby_, or the sins and follies of the _Shandy_ family, Heaven has
thought fit to draw forth the heaviest of its artillery against me; and
that the prosperity of my child is the point upon which the whole force
of it is directed to play.——Such a thing would batter the whole
universe about our ears, brother _Shandy_, said my uncle _Toby_—if it
was so—Unhappy _Tristram!_ child of wrath! child of decrepitude!
interruption! mistake! and discontent! What one misfortune or disaster
in the book of embryotic evils, that could unmechanize thy frame, or
entangle thy filaments! which has not fallen upon thy head, or ever
thou camest into the world——what evils in thy passage into it!——what
evils since!——produced into being, in the decline of thy father’s
days——when the powers of his imagination and of his body were waxing
feeble——when radical heat and radical moisture, the elements which
should have temper’d thine, were drying up; and nothing left to found
thy stamina in, but negations—’tis pitiful——brother _Toby_, at the
best, and called out for all the little helps that care and attention
on both sides could give it. But how were we defeated! You know the
event, brother _Toby_——’tis too melancholy a one to be repeated
now——when the few animal spirits I was worth in the world, and with
which memory, fancy, and quick parts should have been convey’d——were
all dispersed, confused, confounded, scattered, and sent to the
devil.——
Here then was the time to have put a stop to this persecution against
him;——and tried an experiment at least——whether calmness and serenity
of mind in your sister, with a due attention, brother _Toby_, to her
evacuations and repletions——and the rest of her non-naturals, might
not, in a course of nine months gestation, have set all things to
rights.——My child was bereft of these!——What a teazing life did she
lead herself, and consequently her fœtus too, with that nonsensical
anxiety of hers about lying-in in town? I thought my sister submitted
with the greatest patience, replied my uncle _Toby_——I never heard her
utter one fretful word about it.——She fumed inwardly, cried my father;
and that, let me tell you, brother, was ten times worse for the
child—and then! what battles did she fight with me, and what perpetual
storms about the midwife.——There she gave vent, said my uncle
_Toby_.——Vent! cried my father, looking up.
But what was all this, my dear _Toby_, to the injuries done us by my
child’s coming head foremost into the world, when all I wished, in this
general wreck of his frame, was to have saved this little casket
unbroke, unrifled.——
With all my precautions, how was my system turned topside-turvy in the
womb with my child! his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a
pressure of 470 pounds avoirdupois weight acting so perpendicularly
upon its apex—that at this hour ’tis ninety _per Cent._ insurance, that
the fine net-work of the intellectual web be not rent and torn to a
thousand tatters.
——Still we could have done.——Fool, coxcomb, puppy——give him but a
NOSE——Cripple, Dwarf, Driveller, Goosecap——shape him as you will) the
door of fortune stands open—_O Licetus! Licetus!_ had I been blest with
a fœtus five inches long and a half, like thee—Fate might have done her
worst.
Still, brother _Toby_, there was one cast of the dye left for our child
after all—_O Tristram! Tristram! Tristram!_
We will send for Mr. _Yorick_, said my uncle _Toby_.
——You may send for whom you will, replied my father.