(MODERN ULSTER VERSION.)
_A Fragment after the Fashion of Sterne._
_Uncle Toby_ Mr. J-HN B-LL. _Widow Wadman_ Mrs. ULST-R.
"I AM half distracted, Captain SHANDY," said Mrs. WADMAN, holding up
her cambric handkerchief to her left eye, as she approached the door
of my Uncle TOBY'S Sentry-Box--"a mote, or sand, or small fly,
or something, I know not what, has got into this eye of mine. The
Gardener declares it is one of those Green Flies which are the pest of
this Distressful Country. I refuse to believe _that_. There never was,
never will, never can, never _shall_ be any Green in _my_ eye. But
whatever it is, mote or beam, it is awfully irritating. Do look
into it; it is not in the white, or perhaps I should say--for I am a
brunette of olive complexion, you know--in the Yellow----"
In saying which, Mrs. WADMAN edged herself close in beside my Uncle
TOBY, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she
gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up "_Do_ look into
it!" said she.
Honest soul! Thou wast ever being adjured to "look into" things, all
sorts of things, from Widow's eyes to matters of far wider scope, and
infinitely less simplicity and clarity. And thou didst look into it
with as much innocency and simple good-will as ever child looked into
a raree show-box.
If a man will be prying, of his own accord, into things of such
ticklish and troublesome, not to say perilous nature--I've nothing to
say to it.
My Uncle TOBY never did, being naturally of an unobservant and
easy-going nature; and I will answer for him, that he would have sat
quietly in his seat in that Sentry Box or the House from February
to September (which you know were his favourite months for serious
Session) with an eye as fine and soft as the Thracian Rhodope's, or
as threatening and commanding as that of Mars--even a hectoring fiery
thrasonic Hibernian Mars--himself, without being able to tell whether
it was a black or a blue one, or even a Green or a Yellow.
The difficulty was to get my Uncle TOBY to look into things at all.
'Tis surmounted. And----
I see him yonder, with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes
falling out of it, looking, and looking, then rubbing his eyes and
looking again, with twice the good-nature that ever GALILEO looked for
a spot in the sun.
In vain! For by all the powers which animate the organ, Widow WADMAN'S
left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right. 'Tis true the
unfortunate, and something irate lady--and what lady would _not_ be
irate at the charge of having aught of Green in her eye?--hath with
her cambric handkerchief rubbed the sinister orb into a state of
roseate irritation--externally--but there is neither mote, nor sand,
nor dust, nor chaff, nor speck, nor fly,--Green or otherwise--nor
particle of solid opaque matter floating in it. 'Tis, indeed, pure
optic illusion on the Widow's part, illusion born, perchance, partly
of fear, partly of pique. There is nothing, my dear paternal Uncle,
but one lambent, feverish fire, deliciously attractive, even in its
angry heat, fascinating even whilst phlogistic, shooting out from
every part of it, in all directions, into thine----
----If thou lookest, Uncle TOBY, in search of this imaginary mote one
moment longer--thou art undone.
An eye is, for all the world, exactly like a cannon in this respect;
that it is not so much the eye or the cannon, in themselves, as it is
the carriage of the eye--and the carriage of the cannon, by which both
the one and the other are enabled to do so much execution. The Widow's
eye, owing mainly to the militant and menacing carriage thereof,
_looked_ as formidable as a whole park of artillery, ranged up to
defend a final fortification, or, as it might be, Last Ditch of
defence. Whether it were exactly as fierce or formidable as it
seemed--well, that was a question which my Uncle TOBY had not yet
fully "looked into"--as he was now doing into Widow WADMAN'S left eye.
"I protest, Madam," said my Uncle TOBY, "I can see nothing whatever in
your eye!"
[Illustration: UNCLE TOBY AND WIDOW WADMAN.
(_Modern Ulster Version. After C. R. Leslie, R.A.'s celebrated
picture._)