FIFTY thousand pannier loads of devils—(not of the Archbishop of
_Benevento_’s—I mean of _Rabelais_’s devils), with their tails chopped
off by their rumps, could not have made so diabolical a scream of it,
as I did—when the accident befel me: it summoned up my mother instantly
into the nursery,—so that _Susannah_ had but just time to make her
escape down the back stairs, as my mother came up the fore.
Now, though I was old enough to have told the story myself,—and young
enough, I hope, to have done it without malignity; yet _Susannah_, in
passing by the kitchen, for fear of accidents, had left it in
short-hand with the cook—the cook had told it with a commentary to
_Jonathan_, and _Jonathan_ to _Obadiah;_ so that by the time my father
had rung the bell half a dozen times, to know what was the matter
above,—was _Obadiah_ enabled to give him a particular account of it,
just as it had happened.—I thought as much, said my father, tucking up
his night-gown;—and so walked up stairs.
One would imagine from this——(though for my own part I somewhat
question it)—that my father, before that time, had actually wrote that
remarkable character in the _Tristra-pædia_, which to me is the most
original and entertaining one in the whole book;—and that is the
_chapter upon sash-windows_, with a bitter _Philippick_ at the end of
it, upon the forgetfulness of chamber-maids.—I have but two reasons for
thinking otherwise.
First, Had the matter been taken into consideration, before the event
happened, my father certainly would have nailed up the sash window for
good an’ all;—which, considering with what difficulty he composed
books,—he might have done with ten times less trouble, than he could
have wrote the chapter: this argument I foresee holds good against his
writing a chapter, even after the event; but ’tis obviated under the
second reason, which I have the honour to offer to the world in support
of my opinion, that my father did not write the chapter upon
sash-windows and chamber-pots, at the time supposed,—and it is this.
——That, in order to render the _Tristra-pædia_ complete,—I wrote the
chapter myself.