My father was always in raptures with this system of my uncle Toby's, as he falsely called it, and would often say, That could his brother Toby to his process have added but a pipe of tobacco, he had wherewithal to have his way, if there was faith in a Spanish proverb, toward the hearts of half the women upon the globe. My uncle Toby never understood what my father meant; nor will I presume to extract more from it than a condemnation of an error which the bulk of the world lie under; but the French, every one of them to a man, who believe in it almost as much as the Real Presence, "That talking of love is making it." I would as soon set about making a black pudding by the same receipt. Let us go on: Mrs. Wadman sat in expectation my uncle Toby would do so, to almost the first pulsation of that minute, wherein silence on one side or the other generally becomes indecent; so edging herself a little more toward him, and raising up her eyes, sub-blushing as she did it, she took up the gantlet, or the discourse (if you like it better), and communed with my uncle Toby thus: "The cares and disquietudes of the marriage-state," quoth Mrs. Wadman, "are very great." "I suppose so," said my uncle Toby. "And therefore when a person," continued Mrs. Wadman, "is so much at his ease as you are, so happy, Captain Shandy, in yourself, your friends, and your amusements, I wonder what reasons can incline you to the state?" "They are written," quoth my uncle Toby, "in the Common Prayer-Book." Thus far my uncle Toby went on warily, and kept within his depth, leaving Mrs. Wadman to sail upon the gulf as she pleased. "As for children," said Mrs. Wadman, "tho a principal end, perhaps, of the institution, and the natural wish, I suppose, of every parent, yet do not we all find that they are certain sorrows, and very uncertain comforts? and what is there, dear sir, to pay one for the heart-aches, what compensation for the many tender and disquieting apprehensions of a suffering and defenseless mother who brings them into life?" "I declare," said my uncle Toby, smitten with pity, "I know of none: unless it be the pleasure which it has pleased God ..." "A fiddlestick!" quoth she.... FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 33: From the "Sentimental Journey."] [Footnote 34: From the "Sentimental Journey."] [Footnote 35: From "Tristram Shandy."] [Footnote 36: From "Tristram Shandy."] THOMAS GRAY Born in 1716, died in 1771; educated at Eton, where he began a lifelong friendship with Horace Walpole; traveled on the Continent with Walpole in 1739; settled in Cambridge in 1741, where in 1768 he was made professor of Modern History; refused the laureateship in 1757; published his "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" in 1751; his poems and letters collected by Mason in 1775. I WARWICK CASTLE[37]