These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times, I say, where orators wore mantles----and pretty large ones too, my brethren, with some twenty or five-and-twenty yards of good purple, superfine, marketable cloth in them--with large flowing folds and doubles, and in a great style of design. --All which plainly shews, may it please your worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service it does at present, both within and without doors, is owing to nothing else in the world, but short coats, and the disuse of _trunk-hose_. ----We can conceal nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing. CHAPTER XV Dr. _Slop_ was within an ace of being an exception to all this argumentation: for happening to have his green bays bag upon his knees, when he began to parody my uncle _Toby_--’twas as good as the best mantle in the world to him: for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence would end in his new-invented _forceps_, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them ready to clap in, when your reverences took so much notice of the ***, which had he managed----my uncle _Toby_ had certainly been overthrown: the sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the salient angle of a ravelin, ----Dr. _Slop_ would never have given them up; --and my uncle _Toby_ would as soon have thought of flying, as taking them by force: but Dr. _Slop_ fumbled so vilely in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil (for they seldom come alone in this life) in pulling out his _forceps_, his _forceps_ unfortunately drew out the _squirt_ along with it. When a proposition can be taken in two senses--’tis a law in disputation, That the respondent may reply to which of the two he pleases, or finds most convenient for him. ----This threw the advantage of the argument quite on my uncle _Toby’s_ side. ----“Good God!” cried my uncle _Toby_, “_are children brought into the world with a squirt?_” CHAPTER XVI