’TIS a pity, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, resting with his hand upon
the corporal’s shoulder, as they both stood surveying their works,—that
we have not a couple of field-pieces to mount in the gorge of that new
redoubt;—’twould secure the lines all along there, and make the attack
on that side quite complete:——get me a couple cast, _Trim._
Your honour shall have them, replied _Trim_, before tomorrow morning.
It was the joy of _Trim_’s heart, nor was his fertile head ever at a
loss for expedients in doing it, to supply my uncle _Toby_ in his
campaigns, with whatever his fancy called for; had it been his last
crown, he would have sate down and hammered it into a paderero, to have
prevented a single wish in his master. The corporal had already,—what
with cutting off the ends of my uncle _Toby_’s spouts—hacking and
chiseling up the sides of his leaden gutters,—melting down his pewter
shaving-bason,—and going at last, like _Lewis_ the Fourteenth, on to
the top of the church, for spare ends, &c.——he had that very campaign
brought no less than eight new battering cannons, besides three
demi-culverins, into the field; my uncle _Toby_’s demand for two more
pieces for the redoubt, had set the corporal at work again; and no
better resource offering, he had taken the two leaden weights from the
nursery window: and as the sash pullies, when the lead was gone, were
of no kind of use, he had taken them away also, to make a couple of
wheels for one of their carriages.
He had dismantled every sash-window in my uncle _Toby_’s house long
before, in the very same way,—though not always in the same order; for
sometimes the pullies have been wanted, and not the lead,—so then he
began with the pullies,—and the pullies being picked out, then the lead
became useless,—and so the lead went to pot too.
——A great MORAL might be picked handsomely out of this, but I have not
time—’tis enough to say, wherever the demolition began, ’twas equally
fatal to the sash window.