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<h2>Chapter 3.LXXI.</h2>
<p>My uncle Toby took the ivory pipe out of the corporal's
hand,—looked at it for half a minute, and returned it.</p>
<p>In less than two minutes, my uncle Toby took the pipe from the
corporal again, and raised it half way to his mouth—then
hastily gave it back a second time.</p>
<p>The corporal redoubled the attack,—my uncle Toby
smiled,—then looked grave,—then smiled for a
moment,—then looked serious for a long time;—Give me
hold of the ivory pipe, Trim, said my uncle Toby—my uncle
Toby put it to his lips,—drew it back directly,—gave a
peep over the horn-beam hedge;—never did my uncle Toby's
mouth water so much for a pipe in his life.—My uncle Toby
retired into the sentry-box with the pipe in his hand.—</p>
<p>—Dear uncle Toby! don't go into the sentry-box with the
pipe,—there's no trusting a man's self with such a thing in
such a corner.</p>
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<h2>Chapter 3.LXXII.</h2>
<p>I beg the reader will assist me here, to wheel off my uncle
Toby's ordnance behind the scenes,—to remove his sentry-box,
and clear the theatre, if possible, of horn-works and half moons,
and get the rest of his military apparatus out of the
way;—that done, my dear friend Garrick, we'll snuff the
candles bright,—sweep the stage with a new broom,—draw
up the curtain, and exhibit my uncle Toby dressed in a new
character, throughout which the world can have no idea how he will
act: and yet, if pity be a-kin to love,—and bravery no alien
to it, you have seen enough of my uncle Toby in these, to trace
these family likenesses, betwixt the two passions (in case there is
one) to your heart's content.</p>
<p>Vain science! thou assistest us in no case of this
kind—and thou puzzlest us in every one.</p>
<p>There was, Madam, in my uncle Toby, a singleness of heart which
misled him so far out of the little serpentine tracks in which
things of this nature usually go on; you can—you can have no
conception of it: with this, there was a plainness and simplicity
of thinking, with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the plies and
foldings of the heart of woman;—and so naked and defenceless
did he stand before you, (when a siege was out of his head,) that
you might have stood behind any one of your serpentine walks, and
shot my uncle Toby ten times in a day, through his liver, if nine
times in a day, Madam, had not served your purpose.</p>
<p>With all this, Madam,—and what confounded every thing as
much on the other hand, my uncle Toby had that unparalleled modesty
of nature I once told you of, and which, by the bye, stood eternal
sentry upon his feelings, that you might as soon—But where am
I going? these reflections crowd in upon me ten pages at least too
soon, and take up that time, which I ought to bestow upon
facts.</p>
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<h2>Chapter 3.LXXIII.</h2>
<p>Of the few legitimate sons of Adam whose breasts never felt what
the sting of love was,—(maintaining first, all mysogynists to
be bastards,)—the greatest heroes of ancient and modern story
have carried off amongst them nine parts in ten of the honour; and
I wish for their sakes I had the key of my study, out of my
draw-well, only for five minutes, to tell you their
names—recollect them I cannot—so be content to accept
of these, for the present, in their stead.</p>
<p>There was the great king Aldrovandus, and Bosphorus, and
Cappadocius, and Dardanus, and Pontus, and Asius,—to say
nothing of the iron-hearted Charles the XIIth, whom the Countess of
K..... herself could make nothing of.—There was Babylonicus,
and Mediterraneus, and Polixenes, and Persicus, and Prusicus, not
one of whom (except Cappadocius and Pontus, who were both a little
suspected) ever once bowed down his breast to the goddess—The
truth is, they had all of them something else to do—and so
had my uncle Toby—till Fate—till Fate I say, envying
his name the glory of being handed down to posterity with
Aldrovandus's and the rest,—she basely patched up the peace
of Utrecht.</p>
<p>—Believe me, Sirs, 'twas the worst deed she did that
year.</p>
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<h2>Chapter 3.LXXIV.</h2>
<p>Amongst the many ill consequences of the treaty of Utrecht, it
was within a point of giving my uncle Toby a surfeit of sieges; and
though he recovered his appetite afterwards, yet Calais itself left
not a deeper scar in Mary's heart, than Utrecht upon my uncle
Toby's. To the end of his life he never could hear Utrecht
mentioned upon any account whatever,—or so much as read an
article of news extracted out of the Utrecht Gazette, without
fetching a sigh, as if his heart would break in twain.</p>
<p>My father, who was a great Motive-Monger, and consequently a
very dangerous person for a man to sit by, either laughing or
crying,—for he generally knew your motive for doing both,
much better than you knew it yourself—would always console my
uncle Toby upon these occasions, in a way, which shewed plainly, he
imagined my uncle Toby grieved for nothing in the whole affair, so
much as the loss of his hobby-horse.—Never mind, brother
Toby, he would say,—by God's blessing we shall have another
war break out again some of these days; and when it does,—the
belligerent powers, if they would hang themselves, cannot keep us
out of play.—I defy 'em, my dear Toby, he would add, to take
countries without taking towns,—or towns without sieges.</p>
<p>My uncle Toby never took this back-stroke of my father's at his
hobby-horse kindly.—He thought the stroke ungenerous; and the
more so, because in striking the horse he hit the rider too, and in
the most dishonourable part a blow could fall; so that upon these
occasions, he always laid down his pipe upon the table with more
fire to defend himself than common.</p>
<p>I told the reader, this time two years, that my uncle Toby was
not eloquent; and in the very same page gave an instance to the
contrary:—I repeat the observation, and a fact which
contradicts it again.—He was not eloquent,—it was not
easy to my uncle Toby to make long harangues,—and he hated
florid ones; but there were occasions where the stream overflowed
the man, and ran so counter to its usual course, that in some parts
my uncle Toby, for a time, was at least equal to
Tertullus—but in others, in my own opinion, infinitely above
him.</p>
<p>My father was so highly pleased with one of these apologetical
orations of my uncle Toby's, which he had delivered one evening
before him and Yorick, that he wrote it down before he went to
bed.</p>
<p>I have had the good fortune to meet with it amongst my father's
papers, with here and there an insertion of his own, betwixt two
crooks, thus (.. .), and is endorsed,</p>
<p>My Brother Toby's Justification of His Own Principles and
Conduct in Wishing to Continue the War.</p>
<p>I may safely say, I have read over this apologetical oration of
my uncle Toby's a hundred times, and think it so fine a model of
defence,—and shews so sweet a temperament of gallantry and
good principles in him, that I give it the world, word for word
(interlineations and all), as I find it.</p>
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<h2>Chapter 3.LXXV.</h2>
<h3>My Uncle Toby's Apologetical Oration.</h3>
<p>I am not insensible, brother Shandy, that when a man whose
profession is arms, wishes, as I have done, for war,—it has
an ill aspect to the world;—and that, how just and right
soever his motives the intentions may be,—he stands in an
uneasy posture in vindicating himself from private views in doing
it.</p>
<p>For this cause, if a soldier is a prudent man, which he may be
without being a jot the less brave, he will be sure not to utter
his wish in the hearing of an enemy; for say what he will, an enemy
will not believe him.—He will be cautious of doing it even to
a friend,—lest he may suffer in his esteem:—But if his
heart is overcharged, and a secret sigh for arms must have its
vent, he will reserve it for the ear of a brother, who knows his
character to the bottom, and what his true notions, dispositions,
and principles of honour are: What, I hope, I have been in all
these, brother Shandy, would be unbecoming in me to say:—much
worse, I know, have I been than I ought,—and something worse,
perhaps, than I think: But such as I am, you, my dear brother
Shandy, who have sucked the same breasts with me,—and with
whom I have been brought up from my cradle,—and from whose
knowledge, from the first hours of our boyish pastimes, down to
this, I have concealed no one action of my life, and scarce a
thought in it—Such as I am, brother, you must by this time
know me, with all my vices, and with all my weaknesses too, whether
of my age, my temper, my passions, or my understanding.</p>
<p>Tell me then, my dear brother Shandy, upon which of them it is,
that when I condemned the peace of Utrecht, and grieved the war was
not carried on with vigour a little longer, you should think your
brother did it upon unworthy views; or that in wishing for war, he
should be bad enough to wish more of his fellow-creatures
slain,—more slaves made, and more families driven from their
peaceful habitations, merely for his own pleasure:—Tell me,
brother Shandy, upon what one deed of mine do you ground it? (The
devil a deed do I know of, dear Toby, but one for a hundred pounds,
which I lent thee to carry on these cursed sieges.)</p>
<p>If, when I was a school-boy, I could not hear a drum beat, but
my heart beat with it—was it my fault?—Did I plant the
propensity there?—Did I sound the alarm within, or
Nature?</p>
<p>When Guy, Earl of Warwick, and Parismus and Parismenus, and
Valentine and Orson, and the Seven Champions of England, were
handed around the school,—were they not all purchased with my
own pocket-money? Was that selfish, brother Shandy? When we read
over the siege of Troy, which lasted ten years and eight
months,—though with such a train of artillery as we had at
Namur, the town might have been carried in a week—was I not
as much concerned for the destruction of the Greeks and Trojans as
any boy of the whole school? Had I not three strokes of a ferula
given me, two on my right hand, and one on my left, for calling
Helena a bitch for it? Did any one of you shed more tears for
Hector? And when king Priam came to the camp to beg his body, and
returned weeping back to Troy without it,—you know, brother,
I could not eat my dinner.—</p>
<p>—Did that bespeak me cruel? Or because, brother Shandy, my
blood flew out into the camp, and my heart panted for
war,—was it a proof it could not ache for the distresses of
war too?</p>
<p>O brother! 'tis one thing for a soldier to gather
laurels,—and 'tis another to scatter cypress.—(Who told
thee, my dear Toby, that cypress was used by the antients on
mournful occasions?)</p>
<p>—'Tis one thing, brother Shandy, for a soldier to hazard
his own life—to leap first down into the trench, where he is
sure to be cut in pieces:—'Tis one thing, from public spirit
and a thirst of glory, to enter the breach the first man,—to
stand in the foremost rank, and march bravely on with drums and
trumpets, and colours flying about his ears:—'Tis one thing,
I say, brother Shandy, to do this,—and 'tis another thing to
reflect on the miseries of war;—to view the desolations of
whole countries, and consider the intolerable fatigues and
hardships which the soldier himself, the instrument who works them,
is forced (for sixpence a day, if he can get it) to undergo.</p>
<p>Need I be told, dear Yorick, as I was by you, in Le Fever's
funeral sermon, That so soft and gentle a creature, born to love,
to mercy, and kindness, as man is, was not shaped for
this?—But why did you not add, Yorick,—if not by
Nature—that he is so by Necessity?—For what is war?
what is it, Yorick, when fought as ours has been, upon principles
of liberty, and upon principles of honour—what is it, but the
getting together of quiet and harmless people, with their swords in
their hands, to keep the ambitious and the turbulent within bounds?
And heaven is my witness, brother Shandy, that the pleasure I have
taken in these things,—and that infinite delight, in
particular, which has attended my sieges in my bowling-green, has
arose within me, and I hope in the corporal too, from the
consciousness we both had, that in carrying them on, we were
answering the great ends of our creation.</p>
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