MY father was returned from his walk to the fish-pond——and opened the parlour-door in the very height of the attack, just as my uncle _Toby_ was marching up the glacis——_Trim_ recovered his arms——never was my uncle _Toby_ caught in riding at such a desperate rate in his life! Alas! my uncle _Toby!_ had not a weightier matter called forth all the ready eloquence of my father—how hadst thou then and thy poor HOBBY-HORSE too been insulted! My father hung up his hat with the same air he took it down; and after giving a slight look at the disorder of the room, he took hold of one of the chairs which had formed the corporal’s breach, and placing it over-against my uncle _Toby_, he sat down in it, and as soon as the tea-things were taken away, and the door shut, he broke out in a lamentation as follows: MY FATHER'S LAMENTATION IT is in vain longer, said my father, addressing himself as much to _Ernulphus_’s curse, which was laid upon the corner of the chimney-piece——as to my uncle _Toby_ who sat under it——it is in vain longer, said my father, in the most querulous monotony imaginable, to struggle as I have done against this most uncomfortable of human persuasions——I see it plainly, that either for my own sins, brother _Toby_, or the sins and follies of the _Shandy_ family, Heaven has thought fit to draw forth the heaviest of its artillery against me; and that the prosperity of my child is the point upon which the whole force of it is directed to play.——Such a thing would batter the whole universe about our ears, brother _Shandy_, said my uncle _Toby_—if it was so—Unhappy _Tristram!_ child of wrath! child of decrepitude! interruption! mistake! and discontent! What one misfortune or disaster in the book of embryotic evils, that could unmechanize thy frame, or entangle thy filaments! which has not fallen upon thy head, or ever thou camest into the world——what evils in thy passage into it!——what evils since!——produced into being, in the decline of thy father’s days——when the powers of his imagination and of his body were waxing feeble——when radical heat and radical moisture, the elements which should have temper’d thine, were drying up; and nothing left to found thy stamina in, but negations—’tis pitiful——brother _Toby_, at the best, and called out for all the little helps that care and attention on both sides could give it. But how were we defeated! You know the event, brother _Toby_——’tis too melancholy a one to be repeated now——when the few animal spirits I was worth in the world, and with which memory, fancy, and quick parts should have been convey’d——were all dispersed, confused, confounded, scattered, and sent to the devil.——