ture is the same in all professions.

The midwife had just before been put over Dr. Slop's head--He had not
digested it.--No, replied Dr. Slop, 'twould be full as proper if
the midwife came down to me.--I like subordination, quoth my uncle
Toby,--and but for it, after the reduction of Lisle, I know not what
might have become of the garrison of Ghent, in the mutiny for bread,
in the year Ten.--Nor, replied Dr. Slop, (parodying my uncle Toby's
hobby-horsical reflection; though full as hobby-horsical himself)--do
I know, Captain Shandy, what might have become of the garrison above
stairs, in the mutiny and confusion I find all things are in at present,
but for the subordination of fingers and thumbs to...--the application
of which, Sir, under this accident of mine, comes in so a propos, that
without it, the cut upon my thumb might have been felt by the Shandy
family, as long as the Shandy family had a name.

Chapter 2.VII.

Let us go back to the...--in the last chapter.

It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence
flourished at Athens and Rome, and would be so now, did orators wear
mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing
about you in petto, ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it. A
scar, an axe, a sword, a pink'd doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a
half of pot-ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot--but above
all, a tender infant royally accoutred.--Tho' if it was too young, and
the oration as long as Tully's second Philippick--it must certainly have
beshit the orator's mantle.--And then again, if too old,--it must have
been unwieldly and incommodious to his action--so as to make him lose
by his child almost as much as he could gain by it.--Otherwise, when a
state orator has hit the precise age to a minute--hid his Bambino in his
mantle so cunningly that no mortal could smell it--and produced it so
critically, that no soul could say, it came in by head and shoulders--Oh
Sirs! it has done wonders--It has open'd the sluices, and turn'd the
brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politicks of half a
nation.

These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and
times, I say, where orators wore mantles--and pretty large ones too,
my brethren, with some twenty or five-and-twenty yards of good purple,
superfine, marketable cloth in them--with large flowing folds and
doubles, and in a great style of design.--All which p