But having never hitherto been pressed with such a conjuncture of things, as made it necessary to settle either the priority or justice of their claims——like a wise man he had refrained entering into any nice or critical examination about them: so that upon the dismission of every other project at this crisis——the two old projects, the OX-MOOR and my BROTHER, divided him again; and so equal a match were they for each other, as to become the occasion of no small contest in the old gentleman’s mind—which of the two should be set o’going first. ——People may laugh as they will—but the case was this. It had ever been the custom of the family, and by length of time was almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of it should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts before marriage—not only for the sake of bettering his own private parts, by the benefit of exercise and change of so much air—but simply for the mere delectation of his fancy, by the feather put into his cap, of having been abroad—_tantum valet_, my father would say, _quantum sonat._ Now as this was a reasonable, and in course a most christian indulgence——to deprive him of it, without why or wherefore——and thereby make an example of him, as the first _Shandy_ unwhirl’d about _Europe_ in a post-chaise, and only because he was a heavy lad——would be using him ten times worse than a _Turk._ On the other hand, the case of the _Ox-moor_ was full as hard. Exclusive of the original purchase-money, which was eight hundred pounds——it had cost the family eight hundred pounds more in a law-suit about fifteen years before—besides the Lord knows what trouble and vexation. It had been moreover in possession of the _Shandy_-family ever since the middle of the last century; and though it lay full in view before the house, bounded on one extremity by the water-mill, and on the other by the projected wind-mill spoken of above—and for all these reasons seemed to have the fairest title of any part of the estate to the care and protection of the family—yet by an unaccountable fatality, common to men, as well as the ground they tread on——it had all along most shamefully been overlook’d; and to speak the truth of it, had suffered so much by it, that it would have made any man’s heart have bled (_Obadiah_ said) who understood the value of the land, to have rode over it, and only seen the condition it was in.