d a half and three eighths
longer than Didius his beard--I'm glad he takes up the cudgels for me,
so I give myself no farther trouble about the answer.)--Brother Didius,
Tribonius will say, it is a decreed case, as you may find it in the
fragments of Gregorius and Hermogines's codes, and in all the codes from
Justinian's down to the codes of Louis and Des Eaux--That the sweat of a
man's brows, and the exsudations of a man's brains, are as much a man's
own property as the breeches upon his backside;--which said exsudations,
&c. being dropp'd upon the said apple by the labour of finding it,
and picking it up; and being moreover indissolubly wasted, and as
indissolubly annex'd, by the picker up, to the thing pick'd up, carried
home, roasted, peel'd, eaten, digested, and so on;--'tis evident that
the gatherer of the apple, in so doing, has mix'd up something which
was his own, with the apple which was not his own, by which means he has
acquired a property;--or, in other words, the apple is John's apple.

By the same learned chain of reasoning my father stood up for all his
opinions; he had spared no pains in picking them up, and the more they
lay out of the common way, the better still was his title.--No mortal
claimed them; they had cost him moreover as much labour in cooking and
digesting as in the case above, so that they might well and truly be
said to be of his own goods and chattels.--Accordingly he held fast by
'em, both by teeth and claws--would fly to whatever he could lay his
hands on--and, in a word, would intrench and fortify them round with
as many circumvallations and breast-works, as my uncle Toby would a
citadel.

There was one plaguy rub in the way of this--the scarcity of materials
to make any thing of a defence with, in case of a smart attack; inasmuch
as few men of great genius had exercised their parts in writing books
upon the subject of great noses: by the trotting of my lean horse, the
thing is incredible! and I am quite lost in my understanding, when I am
considering what a treasure of precious time and talents together has
been wasted upon worse subjects--and how many millions of books in all
languages and in all possible types and bindings, have been fabricated
upon points not half so much tending to the unity and peace-making of
the world. What was to be had, however, he set the greater store by;
and though my father would oft-times sport with my uncle Toby's
library--which, by-the-bye, was ridi