Now I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by _Erasmus_, the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic conveniences also; for that in a case of distress—and for want of a pair of bellows, it will do excellently well, _ad ixcitandum focum_ (to stir up the fire.) Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had done the seeds of all other knowledge——so that he had got out his penknife, and was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch some better sense into it.——I’ve got within a single letter, brother _Toby_, cried my father, of _Erasmus_ his mystic meaning.—You are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, in all conscience.——Pshaw! cried my father, scratching on——I might as well be seven miles off.—I’ve done it—said my father, snapping his fingers—See, my dear brother _Toby_, how I have mended the sense.——But you have marr’d a word, replied my uncle _Toby_.—My father put on his spectacles——bit his lip——and tore out the leaf in a passion. C H A P. XXXI O _SLAWKENBERGIUS!_ thou faithful analyzer of my _Disgrazias_—thou sad foreteller of so many of the whips and short turns which on one stage or other of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my nose, and no other cause, that I am conscious of.—Tell me, _Slawkenbergius!_ what secret impulse was it? what intonation of voice? whence came it? how did it sound in thy ears?——art thou sure thou heard’st it?——which first cried out to thee——go——go, _Slawkenbergius!_ dedicate the labours of thy life—neglect thy pastimes——call forth all the powers and faculties of thy nature——macerate thyself in the service of mankind, and write a grand FOLIO for them, upon the subject of their noses. How the communication was conveyed into _Slawkenbergius_’s sensorium——so that _Slawkenbergius_ should know whose finger touch’d the key—and whose hand it was that blew the bellows—as _Hafen Slawkenbergius_ has been dead and laid in his grave above fourscore and ten years——we can only raise conjectures. _Slawkenbergius_ was play’d upon, for aught I know, like one of _Whitefield_’s disciples——that is, with such a distinct intelligence, Sir, of which of the two masters it was that had been practising upon his _instrument_——as to make all reasoning upon it needless.