IT is a great pity——but ’tis certain from every day’s observation of
man, that he may be set on fire like a candle, at either end—provided
there is a sufficient wick standing out; if there is not—there’s an end
of the affair; and if there is—by lighting it at the bottom, as the
flame in that case has the misfortune generally to put out
itself—there’s an end of the affair again.
For my part, could I always have the ordering of it which way I would
be burnt myself—for I cannot bear the thoughts of being burnt like a
beast—I would oblige a housewife constantly to light me at the top; for
then I should burn down decently to the socket; that is, from my head
to my heart, from my heart to my liver, from my liver to my bowels, and
so on by the meseraick veins and arteries, through all the turns and
lateral insertions of the intestines and their tunicles to the blind
gut——
——I beseech you, doctor _Slop_, quoth my uncle _Toby_, interrupting him
as he mentioned the _blind gut_, in a discourse with my father the
night my mother was brought to bed of me——I beseech you, quoth my uncle
_Toby_, to tell me which is the blind gut; for, old as I am, I vow I do
not know to this day where it lies.
The blind gut, answered doctor _Slop_, lies betwixt the _Ilion_ and
_Colon_——
In a man? said my father.
——’Tis precisely the same, cried doctor _Slop_, in a woman.——
That’s more than I know; quoth my father.