’Tis of _Cornelius Gallus_, the prætor—which, I dare say, brother _Toby_, you have read.—I dare say I have not, replied my uncle.—He died, said my father as * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * —And if it was with his wife, said my uncle _Toby_—there could be no hurt in it.—That’s more than I know—replied my father. C H A P. V MY mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the passage which led to the parlour, as my uncle _Toby_ pronounced the word _wife._—’Tis a shrill penetrating sound of itself, and _Obadiah_ had helped it by leaving the door a little a-jar, so that my mother heard enough of it to imagine herself the subject of the conversation; so laying the edge of her finger across her two lips—holding in her breath, and bending her head a little downwards, with a twist of her neck—(not towards the door, but from it, by which means her ear was brought to the chink)—she listened with all her powers:——the listening slave, with the Goddess of Silence at his back, could not have given a finer thought for an intaglio. In this attitude I am determined to let her stand for five minutes: till I bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as _Rapin_ does those of the church) to the same period. C H A P. VI THOUGH in one sense, our family was certainly a simple machine, as it consisted of a few wheels; yet there was thus much to be said for it, that these wheels were set in motion by so many different springs, and acted one upon the other from such a variety of strange principles and impulses——that though it was a simple machine, it had all the honour and advantages of a complex one,——and a number of as odd movements within it, as ever were beheld in the inside of a _Dutch_ silk-mill. Amongst these there was one, I am going to speak of, in which, perhaps, it was not altogether so singular, as in many others; and it was this, that whatever motion, debate, harangue, dialogue, project, or dissertation, was going forwards in the parlour, there was generally another at the same time, and upon the same subject, running parallel along with it in the kitchen.