ravelins, bastions, and curtains,
make but a poor, contemptible, fiddle-faddle piece of work of it here
upon paper, compared to what your honour and I could make of it were we
out in the country by ourselves, and had but a rood and a half of ground
to do what we pleased with. As summer is coming on," continued Trim,
"your honour might sit out of doors and give me the nography"--(call it
icnography, quoth my uncle)--"of the town or citadel your honour was
pleased to sit down before, and I will be shot by your honour upon the
glacis of it if I did not fortify it to your honour's mind."--"I dare
say thou wouldst, Trim," quoth my uncle. "I would throw out the earth,"
continued the corporal, "upon this hand towards the town for the scarp,
and on the right hand towards the campaign for the counterscarp."--"Very
right, Trim," quoth my Uncle Toby.--"And when I had sloped them to your
mind, an' please your honour, I would face the glacis, as the finest
fortifications are done in Flanders, with sods, and as your honour knows
they should be, and I would make the walls and parapets with sods
too."--"The best engineers call them gazons, Trim," said my Uncle Toby.

"Your honour understands these matters," replied corporal Trim, "better
than any officer in His Majesty's service; but would your honour please
but let us go into the country, I would work under your honour's
directions like a horse, and make fortifications for you something like
a Tansy with all their batteries, saps, ditches, and pallisadoes, that
it should be worth all the world to ride twenty miles to go and see it."

My Uncle Toby blushed as red as scarlet as Trim went on, but it was not
a blush of guilt, of modesty, or of anger--it was a blush of joy; he was
fired with Corporal Trim's project and description. "Trim," said my
Uncle Toby, "say no more; but go down, Trim, this moment, my lad, and
bring up my supper this instant."

Trim ran down and brought up his master's supper, to no purpose. Trim's
plan of operation ran so in my Uncle Toby's head, he could not taste it.
"Trim," quoth my Uncle Toby, "get me to bed." 'Twas all one. Corporal
Trim's description had fired his imagination. My Uncle Toby could not
shut his eyes. The more he considered it, the more bewitching the scene
appeared to him; so that two full hours before daylight he had come to a
final determination, and had concerted the whole plan of his and
Corporal Trim's decampment.

My Uncle Toby had a n