ly have convinced
him that there is no instrument so fit to draw such a thing with, as
that which I have pitch'd upon.

A man and his Hobby-Horse, tho' I cannot say that they act and re-act
exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each
other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind;
and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the
manner of electrified bodies,--and that, by means of the heated parts
of the rider, which come immediately into contact with the back of the
Hobby-Horse,--by long journies and much friction, it so happens, that
the body of the rider is at length fill'd as full of Hobby-Horsical
matter as it can hold;--so that if you are able to give but a clear
description of the nature of the one, you may form a pretty exact notion
of the genius and character of the other.

Now the Hobby-Horse which my uncle Toby always rode upon, was in my
opinion an Hobby-Horse well worth giving a description of, if it was
only upon the score of his great singularity;--for you might have
travelled from York to Dover,--from Dover to Penzance in Cornwall, and
from Penzance to York back again, and not have seen such another upon
the road; or if you had seen such a one, whatever haste you had been in,
you must infallibly have stopp'd to have taken a view of him. Indeed,
the gait and figure of him was so strange, and so utterly unlike was he,
from his head to his tail, to any one of the whole species, that it
was now and then made a matter of dispute,--whether he was really a
Hobby-Horse or no: But as the Philosopher would use no other argument to
the Sceptic, who disputed with him against the reality of motion, save
that of rising up upon his legs, and walking across the room;--so would
my uncle Toby use no other argument to prove his Hobby-Horse was
a Hobby-Horse indeed, but by getting upon his back and riding him
about;--leaving the world, after that, to determine the point as it
thought fit.

In good truth, my uncle Toby mounted him with so much pleasure, and he
carried my uncle Toby so well,--that he troubled his head very little
with what the world either said or thought about it.

It is now high time, however, that I give you a description of him:--But
to go on regularly, I only beg you will give me leave to acquaint you
first, how my uncle Toby came by him.

Chapter 1.XXV.

The wound in my uncle Toby's groin, which he received at the siege of