GREAT wits jump: for the moment Dr. _Slop_ cast his eyes upon his bag (which he had not done till the dispute with my uncle _Toby_ about mid-wifery put him in mind of it)—the very same thought occurred.—’Tis God’s mercy, quoth he (to himself) that Mrs. _Shandy_ has had so bad a time of it,——else she might have been brought to bed seven times told, before one half of these knots could have got untied.——But here you must distinguish—the thought floated only in Dr. _Slop_’s mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swimming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man’s understanding, without being carried backwards or forwards, till some little gusts of passion or interest drive them to one side. A sudden trampling in the room above, near my mother’s bed, did the proposition the very service I am speaking of. By all that’s unfortunate, quoth Dr. _Slop_, unless I make haste, the thing will actually befall me as it is. C H A P. II IN the case of _knots_,—by which, in the first place, I would not be understood to mean slip-knots—because in the course of my life and opinions—my opinions concerning them will come in more properly when I mention the catastrophe of my great uncle Mr. _Hammond Shandy_,—a little man,—but of high fancy:—he rushed into the duke of _Monmouth_’s affair:——nor, secondly, in this place, do I mean that particular species of knots called bow-knots;—there is so little address, or skill, or patience required in the unloosing them, that they are below my giving any opinion at all about them.—But by the knots I am speaking of, may it please your reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, devilish tight, hard knots, made _bona fide_, as _Obadiah_ made his;——in which there is no quibbling provision made by the duplication and return of the two ends of the strings thro’ the annulus or noose made by the second _implication_ of them—to get them slipp’d and undone by.——I hope you apprehend me.