year,--as certain as
ever the Sunday-night came,--to wind up a large house-clock, which we
had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands:--And being
somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been
speaking of,--he had likewise gradually brought some other little family
concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my
uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more
plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.

It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell
upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me to my
grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which have
no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother
could never hear the said clock wound up,--but the thoughts of some
other things unavoidably popped into her head--& vice versa:--Which
strange combination of ideas, the sagacious Locke, who certainly
understood the nature of these things better than most men, affirms
to have produced more wry actions than all other sources of prejudice
whatsoever.

But this by the bye.

Now it appears by a memorandum in my father's pocket-book, which now
lies upon the table, 'That on Lady-day, which was on the 25th of the
same month in which I date my geniture,--my father set upon his journey
to London, with my eldest brother Bobby, to fix him at Westminster
school;' and, as it appears from the same authority, 'That he did
not get down to his wife and family till the second week in May
following,'--it brings the thing almost to a certainty. However,
what follows in the beginning of the next chapter, puts it beyond all
possibility of a doubt.

--But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all December, January, and
February?--Why, Madam,--he was all that time afflicted with a Sciatica.

Chapter 1.V.

On the fifth day of November, 1718, which to the aera fixed on, was
as near nine kalendar months as any husband could in reason have
expected,--was I Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, brought forth into this
scurvy and disastrous world of ours.--I wish I had been born in the
Moon, or in any of the planets, (except Jupiter or Saturn, because I
never could bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared worse
with me in any of them (though I will not answer for Venus) than it
has in this vile, dirty planet of ours,--which, o' my conscience, with
reverence be it