You must be informed then, that _Gastripheres_, who had taken a turn into the kitchen a little before dinner, to see how things went on—observing a wicker-basket of fine chesnuts standing upon the dresser, had ordered that a hundred or two of them might be roasted and sent in, as soon as dinner was over— _Gastripheres_ inforcing his orders about them, that _Didius_, but _Phutatorius_ especially, were particularly fond of ’em. About two minutes before the time that my uncle _Toby_ interrupted _Yorick_’s harangue—_Gastripheres_’s chesnuts were brought in—and as _Phutatorius_’s fondness for ’em was uppermost in the waiter’s head, he laid them directly before _Phutatorius_, wrapt up hot in a clean damask napkin. Now whether it was physically impossible, with half a dozen hands all thrust into the napkin at a time—but that some one chesnut, of more life and rotundity than the rest, must be put in motion—it so fell out, however, that one was actually sent rolling off the table; and as _Phutatorius_ sat straddling under——it fell perpendicularly into that particular aperture of _Phutatorius_’s breeches, for which, to the shame and indelicacy of our language be it spoke, there is no chaste word throughout all _Johnson_’s dictionary——let it suffice to say——it was that particular aperture which, in all good societies, the laws of decorum do strictly require, like the temple of _Janus_ (in peace at least) to be universally shut up. The neglect of this punctilio in _Phutatorius_ (which by-the-bye should be a warning to all mankind) had opened a door to this accident.—— Accident I call it, in compliance to a received mode of speaking——but in no opposition to the opinion either of _Acrites_ or _Mythogeras_ in this matter; I know they were both prepossessed and fully persuaded of it—and are so to this hour, That there was nothing of accident in the whole event——but that the chesnut’s taking that particular course, and in a manner of its own accord—and then falling with all its heat directly into that one particular place, and no other——was a real judgment upon _Phutatorius_ for that filthy and obscene treatise _de Concubinis retinendis_, which _Phutatorius_ had published about twenty years ago——and was that identical week going to give the world a second edition of. It is not my business to dip my pen in this controversy——much undoubtedly may be wrote on both sides of the question—all that concerns me as an historian, is to represent the matter of fact, and render it credible to the reader, that the hiatus in _Phutatorius_’s breeches was sufficiently wide to receive the chesnut;——and that the chesnut, somehow or other, did fall perpendicularly, and piping hot into it, without _Phutatorius_’s perceiving it, or any one else at that time.