nd a pick-axe, and a
couple of--Say no more, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, leaping up upon one
leg, quite overcome with rapture,--and thrusting a guinea into Trim's
hand,--Trim, said my uncle Toby, say no more;--but go down, Trim, this
moment, my lad, and bring up my supper this instant.

Trim ran down and brought up his master's supper,--to no
purpose:--Trim's plan of operation ran so in my uncle Toby's head, he
could not taste it.--Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, get me to bed.--'Twas
all one.--Corporal Trim's description had fired his imagination,--my
uncle Toby could not shut his eyes.--The more he considered it, the more
bewitching the scene appeared to him;--so that, two full hours before
day-light, he had come to a final determination and had concerted the
whole plan of his and Corporal Trim's decampment.

My uncle Toby had a little neat country-house of his own, in the village
where my father's estate lay at Shandy, which had been left him by
an old uncle, with a small estate of about one hundred pounds a-year.
Behind this house, and contiguous to it, was a kitchen-garden of about
half an acre, and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off from it by
a tall yew hedge, was a bowling-green, containing just about as much
ground as Corporal Trim wished for;--so that as Trim uttered the
words, 'A rood and a half of ground to do what they would with,'--this
identical bowling-green instantly presented itself, and became curiously
painted all at once, upon the retina of my uncle Toby's fancy;--which
was the physical cause of making him change colour, or at least of
heightening his blush, to that immoderate degree I spoke of.

Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more heat and
expectation, than my uncle Toby did, to enjoy this self-same thing in
private;--I say in private;--for it was sheltered from the house, as I
told you, by a tall yew hedge, and was covered on the other three sides,
from mortal sight, by rough holly and thick-set flowering shrubs:--so
that the idea of not being seen, did not a little contribute to the
idea of pleasure pre-conceived in my uncle Toby's mind.--Vain thought!
however thick it was planted about,--or private soever it might
seem,--to think, dear uncle Toby, of enjoying a thing which took up a
whole rood and a half of ground,--and not have it known!

How my uncle Toby and Corporal Trim managed this matter,--with the
history of their campaigns, which were no way barren of events,--m