—Go—says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time,—and which after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him;—I’ll not hurt thee, says my uncle _Toby_, rising from his chair, and going across the room, with the fly in his hand,—I’ll not hurt a hair of thy head:—Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;—go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?——This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me. I was but ten years old when this happened: but whether it was, that the action itself was more in unison to my nerves at that age of pity, which instantly set my whole frame into one vibration of most pleasurable sensation;—or how far the manner and expression of it might go towards it;—or in what degree, or by what secret magick,—a tone of voice and harmony of movement, attuned by mercy, might find a passage to my heart, I know not;—this I know, that the lesson of universal good-will then taught and imprinted by my uncle _Toby_, has never since been worn out of my mind: And tho’ I would not depreciate what the study of the _Literæ humaniores_, at the university, have done for me in that respect, or discredit the other helps of an expensive education bestowed upon me, both at home and abroad since;—yet I often think that I owe one half of my philanthropy to that one accidental impression. This is to serve for parents and governors instead of a whole volume upon the subject. I could not give the reader this stroke in my uncle _Toby_’s picture, by the instrument with which I drew the other parts of it,—that taking in no more than the mere HOBBY-HORSICAL likeness:—this is a part of his moral character. My father, in this patient endurance of wrongs, which I mention, was very different, as the reader must long ago have noted; he had a much more acute and quick sensibility of nature, attended with a little soreness of temper; tho’ this never transported him to any thing which looked like malignancy:—yet in the little rubs and vexations of life, ’twas apt to shew itself in a drollish and witty kind of peevishness:——He was, however, frank and generous in his nature;——at all times open to conviction; and in the little ebullitions of this subacid humour towards others, but particularly towards my uncle _Toby_, whom he truly loved:——he would feel more pain, ten times told (except in the affair of my aunt _Dinah_, or where an hypothesis was concerned) than what he ever gave. The characters of the two brothers, in this view of them, reflected light upon each other, and appeared with great advantage in this affair which arose about _Stevinus._