Here then was the time to have put a stop to this persecution against him;——and tried an experiment at least——whether calmness and serenity of mind in your sister, with a due attention, brother _Toby_, to her evacuations and repletions——and the rest of her non-naturals, might not, in a course of nine months gestation, have set all things to rights.——My child was bereft of these!——What a teazing life did she lead herself, and consequently her fœtus too, with that nonsensical anxiety of hers about lying-in in town? I thought my sister submitted with the greatest patience, replied my uncle _Toby_——I never heard her utter one fretful word about it.——She fumed inwardly, cried my father; and that, let me tell you, brother, was ten times worse for the child—and then! what battles did she fight with me, and what perpetual storms about the midwife.——There she gave vent, said my uncle _Toby_.——Vent! cried my father, looking up. But what was all this, my dear _Toby_, to the injuries done us by my child’s coming head foremost into the world, when all I wished, in this general wreck of his frame, was to have saved this little casket unbroke, unrifled.—— With all my precautions, how was my system turned topside-turvy in the womb with my child! his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a pressure of 470 pounds avoirdupois weight acting so perpendicularly upon its apex—that at this hour ’tis ninety _per Cent._ insurance, that the fine net-work of the intellectual web be not rent and torn to a thousand tatters. ——Still we could have done.——Fool, coxcomb, puppy——give him but a NOSE——Cripple, Dwarf, Driveller, Goosecap——shape him as you will) the door of fortune stands open—_O Licetus! Licetus!_ had I been blest with a fœtus five inches long and a half, like thee—Fate might have done her worst. Still, brother _Toby_, there was one cast of the dye left for our child after all—_O Tristram! Tristram! Tristram!_ We will send for Mr. _Yorick_, said my uncle _Toby_. ——You may send for whom you will, replied my father. C H A P. LV WHAT a rate have I gone on at, curvetting and striking it away, two up and two down for three volumes[15] together, without looking once behind, or even on one side of me, to see whom I trod upon!—I’ll tread upon no one——quoth I to myself when I mounted——I’ll take a good rattling gallop; but I’ll not hurt the poorest jack-ass upon the road.——So off I set——up one lane——down another, through this turnpike——over that, as if the arch-jockey of jockeys had got behind me.