ty.'

Is it not better, my dear brother Toby, (for mark--our appetites are but
diseases,)--is it not better not to hunger at all, than to eat?--not to
thirst, than to take physic to cure it?

Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, from love and
melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, like a galled
traveller, who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his journey
afresh?

There is no terrour, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows
from groans and convulsions--and the blowing of noses and the
wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains, in a dying man's
room.--Strip it of these, what is it?--'Tis better in battle than in
bed, said my uncle Toby.--Take away its hearses, its mutes, and its
mourning,--its plumes, scutcheons, and other mechanic aids--What
is it?--Better in battle! continued my father, smiling, for he had
absolutely forgot my brother Bobby--'tis terrible no way--for consider,
brother Toby,--when we are--death is not;--and when death is--we are
not. My uncle Toby laid down his pipe to consider the proposition; my
father's eloquence was too rapid to stay for any man--away it went,--and
hurried my uncle Toby's ideas along with it.--

For this reason, continued my father, 'tis worthy to recollect,
how little alteration, in great men, the approaches of death have
made.--Vespasian died in a jest upon his close-stool--Galba with a
sentence--Septimus Severus in a dispatch--Tiberius in dissimulation, and
Caesar Augustus in a compliment.--I hope 'twas a sincere one--quoth my
uncle Toby.

--'Twas to his wife,--said my father.

Chapter 3.IV.

--And lastly--for all the choice anecdotes which history can produce
of this matter, continued my father,--this, like the gilded dome which
covers in the fabric--crowns all.--

'Tis of Cornelius Gallus, the praetor--which, I dare say, brother Toby,
you have read.--I dare say I have not, replied my uncle.--He died, said
my father as...--And if it was with his wife, said my uncle Toby--there
could be no hurt in it.--That's more than I know--replied my father.

Chapter 3.V.

My mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the passage which
led to the parlour, as my uncle Toby pronounced the word wife.--'Tis a
shrill penetrating sound of itself, and Obadiah had helped it by leaving
the door a little a-jar, so that my mother heard enough of it to imagine
herself the subject of the conversation; so laying the edge