it will be well: but suffer her not to look into
_Rabelais_, or _Scarron_, or _Don Quixote_.

"They are all books which excite laughter; and thou knowest, dear
Toby, that there is no passion so serious as lust.

"Stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, before thou enterest her
parlor.

"And if thou art permitted to sit upon the same sofa with her, and
she gives thee occasion to lay thy hand upon hers--beware of
taking it--thou canst not lay thy hand upon hers, but she will
feel the temper of thine. Leave that and as many other things as
thou canst, quite undetermined; by so doing, thou wilt have her
curiosity on thy side; and if she is not conquered by that, and
thy Asse continues still kicking, which there is great reason to
suppose--thou must begin, with first losing a few ounces of blood
below the ears, according to the practice of the ancient
Scythians, who cured the most intemperate fits of the appetite by
that means.

"_Avicenna_, after this, is for having the part anointed with the
syrup of hellebore, using proper evacuations and purges--and I
believe rightly. But thou must eat little or no goat's flesh, nor
red deer--nor even foal's flesh by any means; and carefully
abstain--that is, as much as thou canst,--from peacocks, cranes,
coots, didappers and water-hens.

"As for thy drink--I need not tell thee, it must be the infusion of
Vervain and the herb Hanea, of which Aelian relates such effects;
but if thy stomach palls with it--discontinue it from time to
time, taking cucumbers, melons, purslane, water-lilies, woodbine,
and lettuce, in the stead of them.

"There is nothing further for thee, which occurs to me at present--

"Unless the breaking out of a fresh war.--So wishing everything,
dear Toby, for the best,

"I rest thy affectionate brother,

"WALTER SHANDY."

Under the present circumstances Sterne himself would doubtless have
omitted from his letter the passage about the ass; and, far from
advising the predestined to be bled he would have changed the regimen
of cucumbers and lettuces for one eminently substantial. He
recommended the exercise of economy, in order to attain to the power
of magic liberality in the moment of war, thus imitating the admirable
example of the English government, which in time of peace has two
hundred ships in commission, but whose shipwrights can, in time of
need, furnish double that quantity when it