ANALOGY, replied my father, is the certain relation and agreement which different——Here a devil of a rap at the door snapped my father’s definition (like his tobacco-pipe) in two,—and, at the same time, crushed the head of as notable and curious a dissertation as ever was engendered in the womb of speculation;—it was some months before my father could get an opportunity to be safely delivered of it:—And, at this hour, it is a thing full as problematical as the subject of the dissertation itself,—(considering the confusion and distresses of our domestick misadventures, which are now coming thick one upon the back of another) whether I shall be able to find a place for it in the third volume or not. C H A P. XXXIII IT is about an hour and a half’s tolerable good reading since my uncle _Toby_ rung the bell, when _Obadiah_ was ordered to saddle a horse, and go for Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife;—so that no one can say, with reason, that I have not allowed _Obadiah_ time enough, poetically speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go and come;——though, morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce had time to get on his boots. If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the bell, and the rap at the door;—and, after finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three-fifths,—should take upon him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather probability of time;—I would remind him, that the idea of duration, and of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our ideas——and is the true scholastic pendulum,——and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried in this matter,—abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever. I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight miles from _Shandy-Hall_ to Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife’s house:—and that whilst _Obadiah_ has been going those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle _Toby_ from _Namur_, quite across all _Flanders_, into _England_:—That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years;—and have since travelled him and Corporal _Trim_ in a chariot-and-four, a journey of near two hundred miles down into _Yorkshire._—all which put together, must have prepared the reader’s imagination for the entrance of Dr. _Slop_ upon the stage,—as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts.