As _Obadiah’s_ was a mix’d case----mark, Sirs, ----I say, a mixed case; for it was obstetrical, ----_scrip_tical, squirtical, papistical----and as far as the coach-horse was concerned in it, ----caballistical----and only partly musical; --_Obadiah_ made no scruple of availing himself of the first expedient which offered; so taking hold of the bag and instruments, and griping them hard together with one hand, and with the finger and thumb of the other putting the end of the hat-band betwixt his teeth, and then slipping his hand down to the middle of it, --he tied and cross-tied them all fast together from one end to the other (as you would cord a trunk) with such a multiplicity of roundabouts and intricate cross turns, with a hard knot at every intersection or point where the strings met, --that Dr. _Slop_ must have had three-fifths of _Job’s_ patience at least to have unloosed them. --I think in my conscience, that had NATURE been in one of her nimble moods, and in humour for such a contest----and she and Dr. _Slop_ both fairly started together----there is no man living who had seen the bag with all that _Obadiah_ had done to it, ----and known likewise the great speed the Goddess can make when she thinks proper, who would have had the least doubt remaining in his mind--which of the two would have carried off the prize. My mother, Madam, had been delivered sooner than the green bag infallibly----at least by twenty _knots_. ----Sport of small accidents, _Tristram Shandy!_ that thou art, and ever will be! had that trial been for thee, and it was fifty to one but it had, ----thy affairs had not been so depress’d--(at least by the depression of thy nose) as they have been; nor had the fortunes of thy house and the occasions of making them, which have so often presented themselves in the course of thy life, to thee, been so often, so vexatiously, so tamely, so irrecoverably abandoned--as thou hast been forced to leave them; ----but ’tis over, ----all but the account of ’em, which cannot be given to the curious till I am got out into the world. CHAPTER IX Great wits jump: for the moment Dr. _Slop_ cast his eyes upon his bag (which he had not done till the dispute with my uncle _Toby_ about midwifery put him in mind of it)--the very same thought occurred. --’Tis God’s mercy, quoth he (to himself) that Mrs. _Shandy_ has had so bad a time of it, ----else she might have been brought to bed seven times told, before one half of these knots could have got untied. ----But here you must distinguish--the thought floated only in Dr. _Slop’s_ mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swimming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man’s understanding, without being carried backwards or forwards, till some little gusts of passion or interest drive them to one side.