WHEN my uncle _Toby_ first mentioned the grenadier, my father, I said, fell down with his nose flat to the quilt, and as suddenly as if my uncle _Toby_ had shot him; but it was not added that every other limb and member of my father instantly relapsed with his nose into the same precise attitude in which he lay first described; so that when corporal _Trim_ left the room, and my father found himself disposed to rise off the bed—he had all the little preparatory movements to run over again, before he could do it. Attitudes are nothing, madam——’tis the transition from one attitude to another——like the preparation and resolution of the discord into harmony, which is all in all. For which reason my father played the same jig over again with his toe upon the floor——pushed the chamber-pot still a little farther within the valance—gave a hem—raised himself up upon his elbow—and was just beginning to address himself to my uncle _Toby_—when recollecting the unsuccessfulness of his first effort in that attitude——he got upon his legs, and in making the third turn across the room, he stopped short before my uncle _Toby_; and laying the three first fingers of his right-hand in the palm of his left, and stooping a little, he addressed himself to my uncle _Toby_ as follows: C H A P. XLII WHEN I reflect, brother _Toby_, upon MAN; and take a view of that dark side of him which represents his life as open to so many causes of trouble—when I consider, brother _Toby_, how oft we eat the bread of affliction, and that we are born to it, as to the portion of our inheritance——I was born to nothing, quoth my uncle _Toby_, interrupting my father—but my commission. Zooks! said my father, did not my uncle leave you a hundred and twenty pounds a year?——What could I have done without it? replied my uncle _Toby_——That’s another concern, said my father testily—But I say _Toby_, when one runs over the catalogue of all the cross-reckonings and sorrowful _Items_ with which the heart of man is overcharged, ’tis wonderful by what hidden resources the mind is enabled to stand out, and bear itself up, as it does, against the impositions laid upon our nature.——’Tis by the assistance of Almighty God, cried my uncle _Toby_, looking up, and pressing the palms of his hands close together——’tis not from our own strength, brother _Shandy_——a centinel in a wooden centry-box might as well pretend to stand it out against a detachment of fifty men.——We are upheld by the grace and the assistance of the best of Beings. ——That is cutting the knot, said my father, instead of untying it,——But give me leave to lead you, brother _Toby_, a little deeper into the mystery. With all my heart, replied my uncle _Toby_.