Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness,—for he was your brother.—Oh
corporal! had I thee, but now,—now, that I am able to give thee a
dinner and protection,—how would I cherish thee! thou should’st wear
thy Montero-cap every hour of the day, and every day of the week.—and
when it was worn out, I would purchase thee a couple like it:——But
alas! alas! alas! now that I can do this in spite of their
reverences—the occasion is lost—for thou art gone;—thy genius fled up
to the stars from whence it came;—and that warm heart of thine, with
all its generous and open vessels, compressed into a _clod of the
valley!_
——But what——what is this, to that future and dreaded page, where I look
towards the velvet pall, decorated with the military ensigns of thy
master—the first—the foremost of created beings;——where, I shall see
thee, faithful servant! laying his sword and scabbard with a trembling
hand across his coffin, and then returning pale as ashes to the door,
to take his mourning horse by the bridle, to follow his hearse, as he
directed thee;——where—all my father’s systems shall be baffled by his
sorrows; and, in spite of his philosophy, I shall behold him, as he
inspects the lackered plate, twice taking his spectacles from off his
nose, to wipe away the dew which nature has shed upon them——When I see
him cast in the rosemary with an air of disconsolation, which cries
through my ears,——O _Toby!_ in what corner of the world shall I seek
thy fellow?
——Gracious powers! which erst have opened the lips of the dumb in his
distress, and made the tongue of the stammerer speak plain—when I shall
arrive at this dreaded page, deal not with me, then, with a stinted
hand.
C H A P. LXIX
THE corporal, who the night before had resolved in his mind to supply
the grand _desideratum_, of keeping up something like an incessant
firing upon the enemy during the heat of the attack,—had no further
idea in his fancy at that time, than a contrivance of smoking tobacco
against the town, out of one of my uncle _Toby_’s six field-pieces,
which were planted on each side of his sentry-box; the means of
effecting which occurring to his fancy at the same time, though he had
pledged his cap, he thought it in no danger from the miscarriage of his
projects.
Upon turning it this way, and that, a little in his mind, he soon began
to find out, that by means of his two _Turkish_ tobacco-pipes, with the
supplement of three smaller tubes of wash-leather at each of their
lower ends, to be tagg’d by the same number of tin-pipes fitted to the
touch-holes, and sealed with clay next the cannon, and then tied
hermetically with waxed silk at their several insertions into the
_Morocco_ tube,—he should be able to fire the six field-pieces all
together, and with the same ease as to fire one.———
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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