Part 109

Now in order to clear up the mist which hangs upon these three pages, I must endeavour to be as clear as possible myself.

Rub your hands thrice across your foreheads—blow your noses—cleanse your emunctories—sneeze, my good people!——God bless you——

Now give me all the help you can.

C H A P. LXXX

AS there are fifty different ends (counting all ends in——as well civil as religious) for which a woman takes a husband, the first sets about and carefully weighs, then separates and distinguishes in her mind, which of all that number of ends is hers; then by discourse, enquiry, argumentation, and inference, she investigates and finds out whether she has got hold of the right one——and if she has——then, by pulling it gently this way and that way, she further forms a judgment, whether it will not break in the drawing.

The imagery under which Slawkenbergius impresses this upon the reader’s fancy, in the beginning of his third Decad, is so ludicrous, that the honour I bear the sex, will not suffer me to quote it——otherwise it is not destitute of humour.

“She first, saith Slawkenbergius, stops the asse, and holding his halter in her left hand (lest he should get away) she thrusts her right hand into the very bottom of his pannier to search for it—For what?—you’ll not know the sooner, quoth Slawkenbergius, for interrupting me——

“I have nothing, good Lady, but empty bottles;’ says the asse.

“I’m loaded with tripes;” says the second.

——And thou art little better, quoth she to the third; for nothing is there in thy panniers but trunk-hose and pantofles—and so to the fourth and fifth, going on one by one through the whole string, till coming to the asse which carries it, she turns the pannier upside down, looks at it—considers it—samples it—measures it—stretches it—wets it—dries it—then takes her teeth both to the warp and weft of it.

——Of what? for the love of Christ!

I am determined, answered Slawkenbergius, that all the powers upon earth shall never wring that secret from my breast.

C H A P. LXXXI

WE live in a world beset on all sides with mysteries and riddles—and so ’tis no matter——else it seems strange, that Nature, who makes every thing so well to answer its destination, and seldom or never errs, unless for pastime, in giving such forms and aptitudes to whatever passes through her hands, that whether she designs for the plough, the caravan, the cart—or whatever other creature she models, be it but an asse’s foal, you are sure to have the thing you wanted; and yet at the same time should so eternally bungle it as she does, in making so simple a thing as a married man.

Whether it is in the choice of the clay——or that it is frequently spoiled in the baking; by an excess of which a husband may turn out too crusty (you know) on one hand——or not enough so, through defect of heat, on the other——or whether this great Artificer is not so attentive to the little Platonic exigences of that part of the species, for whose use she is fabricating this——or that her Ladyship sometimes scarce knows what sort of a husband will do——I know not: we will discourse about it after supper.

It is enough, that neither the observation itself, or the reasoning upon it, are at all to the purpose—but rather against it; since with regard to my uncle Toby’s fitness for the marriage state, nothing was ever better: she had formed him of the best and kindliest clay——had temper’d it with her own milk, and breathed into it the sweetest spirit——she had made him all gentle, generous, and humane——she had filled his heart with trust and confidence, and disposed every passage which led to it, for the communication of the tenderest offices——she had moreover considered the other causes for which matrimony was ordained——

And accordingly * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.

The DONATION was not defeated by my uncle Toby’s wound.

Now this last article was somewhat apocryphal; and the Devil, who is the great disturber of our faiths in this world, had raised scruples in Mrs. Wadman’s brain about it; and like a true devil as he was, had done his own work at the same time, by turning my uncle Toby’s Virtue thereupon into nothing but empty bottles, tripes, trunk-hose, and pantofles.

C H A P. LXXXII

MRS. Bridget had pawn’d all the little stock of honour a poor chamber-maid was worth in the world, that she would get to the bottom of the affair in ten days; and it was built upon one of the most concessible postulata in nature: namely, that whilst my uncle Toby was making love to her mistress, the corporal could find nothing better to do, than make love to her——“And I’ll let him as much as he will, said Bridget, to get it out of him.”

Friendship has two garments; an outer and an under one. Bridget was serving her mistress’s interests in the one—and doing the thing which most pleased herself in the other: so had as many stakes depending upon my uncle Toby’s wound, as the Devil himself——Mrs. Wadman had but one—and as it possibly might be her last (without discouraging Mrs. Bridget, or discrediting her talents) was determined to play her cards herself.

She wanted not encouragement: a child might have look’d into his hand——there was such a plainness and simplicity in his playing out what trumps he had——with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the ten-ace——and so naked and defenceless did he sit upon the same sopha with widow Wadman, that a generous heart would have wept to have won the game of him.

Let us drop the metaphor.

C H A P. LXXXIII

——AND the story too—if you please: for though I have all along been hastening towards this part of it, with so much earnest desire, as well knowing it to be the choicest morsel of what I had to offer to the world, yet now that I am got to it, any one is welcome to take my pen, and go on with the story for me that will—I see the difficulties of the descriptions I’m going to give—and feel my want of powers.

It is one comfort at least to me, that I lost some fourscore ounces of blood this week in a most uncritical fever which attacked me at the beginning of this chapter; so that I have still some hopes remaining, it may be more in the serous or globular parts of the blood, than in the subtile aura of the brain——be it which it will—an Invocation can do no hurt——and I leave the affair entirely to the invoked, to inspire or to inject me according as he sees good.

T H E I N V O C A T I O N