——Let no man say from what taggs and jaggs hints may not be cut out for the advancement of human knowledge. Let no man, who has read my father’s first and second _beds of justice_, ever rise up and say again, from collision of what kinds of bodies light may or may not be struck out, to carry the arts and sciences up to perfection.——Heaven! thou knowest how I love them;——thou knowest the secrets of my heart, and that I would this moment give my shirt——Thou art a fool, _Shandy_, says _Eugenius_, for thou hast but a dozen in the world,—and ’twill break thy set.—— No matter for that, _Eugenius;_ I would give the shirt off my back to be burnt into tinder, were it only to satisfy one feverish enquirer, how many sparks at one good stroke, a good flint and steel could strike into the tail of it.——Think ye not that in striking these _in_,—he might, per-adventure, strike something _out?_ as sure as a gun.—— ——But this project, by the bye. The corporal sat up the best part of the night, in bringing _his_ to perfection; and having made a sufficient proof of his cannon, with charging them to the top with tobacco,—he went with contentment to bed. C H A P. LXX THE corporal had slipped out about ten minutes before my uncle _Toby_, in order to fix his apparatus, and just give the enemy a shot or two before my uncle _Toby_ came. He had drawn the six field-pieces for this end, all close up together in front of my uncle _Toby_’s sentry-box, leaving only an interval of about a yard and a half betwixt the three, on the right and left, for the convenience of charging, &c.—and the sake possibly of two batteries, which he might think double the honour of one. In the rear and facing this opening, with his back to the door of the sentry-box, for fear of being flanked, had the corporal wisely taken his post:——He held the ivory pipe, appertaining to the battery on the right, betwixt the finger and thumb of his right hand,—and the ebony pipe tipp’d with silver, which appertained to the battery on the left, betwixt the finger and thumb of the other——and with his right knee fixed firm upon the ground, as if in the front rank of his platoon, was the corporal, with his Montero-cap upon his head, furiously playing off his two cross batteries at the same time against the counter-guard, which faced the counterscarp, where the attack was to be made that morning. His first intention, as I said, was no more than giving the enemy a single puff or two;—but the pleasure of the _puffs_, as well as the _puffing_, had insensibly got hold of the corporal, and drawn him on from puff to puff, into the very height of the attack, by the time my uncle _Toby_ joined him. ’Twas well for my father, that my uncle _Toby_ had not his will to make that day. C H A P. LXXI MY uncle _Toby_ took the ivory pipe out of the corporal’s hand,—looked at it for half a minute, and returned it.