“IT is with Love as with Cuckoldom”——the suffering party is at least
the _third_, but generally the last in the house who knows any thing
about the matter: this comes, as all the world knows, from having half
a dozen words for one thing; and so long, as what in this vessel of the
human frame, is _Love_—may be _Hatred_, in that——_Sentiment_ half a
yard higher——and _Nonsense_———no, Madam,—not there——I mean at the part
I am now pointing to with my forefinger——how can we help ourselves?
Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever
soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle _Toby_ was the worst
fitted, to have push’d his researches, thro’ such a contention of
feelings; and he had infallibly let them all run on, as we do worse
matters, to see what they would turn out——had not _Bridget_’s
pre-notification of them to _Susannah_, and _Susannah_’s repeated
manifestoes thereupon to all the world, made it necessary for my uncle
_Toby_ to look into the affair.