r's
breadth, Trim, replied my uncle.--I would throw out the earth upon
this hand towards the town for the scarp,--and on that hand towards
the campaign for the counterscarp.--Very right, Trim, quoth my uncle
Toby:--And when I had sloped them to your mind,--an' please your Honour,
I would face the glacis, as the finest fortifications are done in
Flanders, with sods,--and as your Honour knows they should be,--and I
would make the walls and parapets with sods too.--The best engineers
call them gazons, Trim, said my uncle Toby.--Whether they are gazons or
sods, is not much matter, replied Trim; your Honour knows they are ten
times beyond a facing either of brick or stone.--I know they are,
Trim in some respects,--quoth my uncle Toby, nodding his head;--for a
cannon-ball enters into the gazon right onwards, without bringing any
rubbish down with it, which might fill the fosse, (as was the case at
St. Nicolas's gate) and facilitate the passage over it.

Your Honour understands these matters, replied Corporal Trim, better
than any officer in his Majesty's service;--but would your Honour please
to let the bespeaking of the table alone, and let us but go into the
country, I would work under your Honour's directions like a horse,
and make fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all their
batteries, saps, ditches, and palisadoes, that it should be worth all
the world's riding twenty miles to go and see it.

My uncle Toby blushed as red as scarlet as Trim went on;--but it was not
a blush of guilt,--of modesty,--or of anger,--it was a blush of joy;--he
was fired with Corporal Trim's project and description.--Trim! said
my uncle Toby, thou hast said enough.--We might begin the campaign,
continued Trim, on the very day that his Majesty and the Allies take the
field, and demolish them town by town as fast as--Trim, quoth my uncle
Toby, say no more. Your Honour, continued Trim, might sit in your
arm-chair (pointing to it) this fine weather, giving me your orders, and
I would--Say no more, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby--Besides, your Honour
would get not only pleasure and good pastime--but good air, and good
exercise, and good health,--and your Honour's wound would be well in a
month. Thou hast said enough, Trim,--quoth my uncle Toby (putting his
hand into his breeches-pocket)--I like thy project mightily.--And if
your Honour pleases, I'll this moment go and buy a pioneer's spade
to take down with us, and I'll bespeak a shovel a