“By all that’s good and great! ma’am,” cried my father, taking the oath out of Ernulphus’s digest, “of course. If it was not for the aids of philosophy, which befriend one so much as they do, you would put a man beside all temper. He is as dead as a doornail, and they are thinking of building a theatre to honour his memory.” “And why should they not, Mr. Shandy?” said my mother. “To be sure, there’s no reason why,” replied my father, “save that they haven’t enough money left over after buying a plot of land in Gower Street to build upon.” Corporal Trim touched his Montero-cap and looked hard at my uncle Toby. “If I durst presume,” said he, “to give your honour my advice, and speak my opinion in this matter.” “Thou art welcome, Trim,” said my uncle Toby. “Why then,” replied Trim, “I think, with humble submission to your honour’s better judgment, I think that had we but a rood or a rood and a half of this ground to do what we pleased with, I would make fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all their batteries, saps, ditches, and palisadoes, that it should be worth all the world’s riding twenty miles to go and see it.” “Then thou wouldst have, Trim,” said my father, “to palisado the Y.M.C.A.” “I never understood rightly the meaning of that word,” said my Uncle Toby, “and I am sure nothing of that name was known to our armies in Flanders.” “’Tis an association of Christian young men,” replied my father, “who for the present hold the Shakespeare Memorialists’ ground in Gower Street.” ’Twas no inconsistent part of my uncle Toby’s character that he feared God and reverenced religion. So the moment my father finished his remark my uncle Toby fell a-whistling “Lillibullero” with more zeal (though more out of tune) than usual. “And the money these Christian youths pay for rents,” continued my father, “is to be used to maintain a company of strolling players” [Here my uncle Toby, throwing back his head, gave a monstrous, long, loud whew-w-w.], “who are to go up and down the country showing the plays of Shakespeare. Up and down, and that, by the way, is how their curtain went on twenty-two occasions in _Romeo and Juliet_.” “Who says so?” asked my uncle Toby. “A parson,” replied my father. “Had he been a soldier,” said my uncle, “he would never have told such a taradiddle. He would have known that the curtain is that part of the wall or rampart which lies between the two bastions, and joins them.” “By the mother who bore us! brother Toby,” quoth my father, “you would provoke a saint. Here have you got us, I know not how, souse into the middle of the old subject again. We are speaking of Shakespeare and not of fortifications.” “Was Shakespeare a soldier, Mr. Shandy, or a young men’s Christian?” said my mother, who had lost her way in the argument. “Neither one nor t’other, my dear,” replied my father (my uncle Toby softly whistled “Lillibullero”); “he was a writer of plays.” “They are foolish things,” said my mother.