cy, quick as a note could follow the touch--he open'd
his ears--and my father observing that he took his pipe out of his
mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to
profit--my father with great pleasure began his sentence again--changing
only the plan, and dropping the metaphor of the siege of it, to keep
clear of some dangers my father apprehended from it.

'Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side, brother
Toby--considering what ingenuity these learned men have all shewn in
their solutions of noses.--Can noses be dissolved? replied my uncle
Toby.

--My father thrust back his chair--rose up--put on his hat--took four
long strides to the door--jerked it open--thrust his head half way
out--shut the door again--took no notice of the bad hinge--returned
to the table--pluck'd my mother's thread-paper out of Slawkenbergius's
book--went hastily to his bureau--walked slowly back--twisted my
mother's thread-paper about his thumb--unbutton'd his waistcoat--threw
my mother's thread-paper into the fire--bit her sattin pin-cushion in
two, fill'd his mouth with bran--confounded it;--but mark!--the oath of
confusion was levell'd at my uncle Toby's brain--which was e'en confused
enough already--the curse came charged only with the bran--the bran, may
it please your honours, was no more than powder to the ball.

'Twas well my father's passions lasted not long; for so long as they
did last, they led him a busy life on't; and it is one of the most
unaccountable problems that ever I met with in my observations of human
nature, that nothing should prove my father's mettle so much, or make
his passions go off so like gun-powder, as the unexpected strokes
his science met with from the quaint simplicity of my uncle Toby's
questions.--Had ten dozen of hornets stung him behind in so many
different places all at one time--he could not have exerted more
mechanical functions in fewer seconds--or started half so much, as with
one single quaere of three words unseasonably popping in full upon him
in his hobby-horsical career.

'Twas all one to my uncle Toby--he smoked his pipe on with unvaried
composure--his heart never intended offence to his brother--and as his
head could seldom find out where the sting of it lay--he always gave
my father the credit of cooling by himself.--He was five minutes and
thirty-five seconds about it in the present case.

By all that's good! said my father, swearing, as he