At the time when the double misfortune above recorded befell
him at the hands of Lucina and the War Office, his father had been
some years dead; but Simon Sterne's widow was still mistress of
the property which she had brought with her at her marriage, and to
Elvington, accordingly, "as soon," writes Sterne, "as I was able to be
carried," the compulsorily retired ensign betook himself with his wife
and his two children. He was not, however, compelled to remain long
dependent on his mother. The ways of the military authorities were as
inscrutable to the army of that day as they are in our day to our
own. Before a year had passed the regiment was ordered to be
re-established, and "our household decamped with bag and baggage for
Dublin." This was in the autumn of 1714, and from that time onward,
for some eleven years, the movements and fortunes of the Sterne
family, as detailed in the narrative of its most famous member, form a
history in which the ludicrous struggles strangely with the pathetic.

A husband, condemned to be the Ulysses-like plaything of adverse gods
at the War Office; an indefatigably prolific wife; a succession of
weak and ailing children; misfortune in the seasons of journeying;
misfortune in the moods of the weather by sea and land--under all this
combination of hostile chances and conditions was the struggle to
be carried on. The little household was perpetually "on the move"--a
little household which was always becoming and never remaining
bigger--continually increased by births, only to be again reduced by
deaths--until the contest between the deadly hardships of travel and
the fatal fecundity of Mrs. Sterne was brought by events to a natural
close. Almost might the unfortunate lady have exclaimed, _Quae regio
in terris nostri non plena laboris?_ She passes from Ireland to
England, and from England to Ireland, from inland garrison to sea-port
town and back again, incessantly bearing and incessantly burying
children--until even her son in his narrative begins to speak of
losing one infant at this place, and "leaving another behind" on that
journey, almost as if they were so many overlooked or misdirected
articles of luggage. The tragic side of the history, however,
overshadows the grotesque. When we think how hard a business was
travel even under the most favourable conditions in those days,
and how serious even in our own times, when travel is easy, are the
discomforts of the women and children of a