At other times, but especially when my uncle _Toby_ was so unfortunate as to say a syllable about cannons, bombs, or petards--my father would exhaust all the stores of his eloquence (which indeed were very great) in a panegyric upon the BATTERING-RAMS of the ancients--the VINEA which _Alexander_ made use of at the siege of _Troy_. --He would tell my uncle _Toby_ of the CATAPULTÆ of the _Syrians_, which threw such monstrous stones so many hundred feet, and shook the strongest bulwarks from their very foundation: --he would go on and describe the wonderful mechanism of the BALLISTA which _Marcellinus_ makes so much rout about! --the terrible effects of the PYROBOLI, which cast fire; ----the danger of the TEREBRA and SCORPIO, which cast javelins. ----But what are these, would he say, to the destructive machinery of corporal _Trim?_ ----Believe me, brother _Toby_, no bridge, or bastion, or sally-port, that ever was constructed in this world, can hold out against such artillery. My uncle _Toby_ would never attempt any defence against the force of this ridicule, but that of redoubling the vehemence of smoaking his pipe; in doing which, he raised so dense a vapour one night after supper, that it set my father, who was a little phthisical, into a suffocating fit of violent coughing: my uncle _Toby_ leap’d up without feeling the pain upon his groin--and, with infinite pity, stood beside his brother’s chair, tapping his back with one hand, and holding his head with the other, and from time to time wiping his eyes with a clean cambrick handkerchief, which he pulled out of his pocket. ----The affectionate and endearing manner in which my uncle _Toby_ did these little offices--cut my father thro’ his reins, for the pain he had just been giving him. ----May my brains be knock’d out with a battering-ram or a catapulta, I care not which, quoth my father to himself--if ever I insult this worthy soul more! CHAPTER XXV