By water the sentiment might easily have come down the _Ganges_ into the _Sinus Gangeticus_, or _Bay of Bengal_, and so into the _Indian Sea_; and following the course of trade (the way from _India_ by the _Cape of Good Hope_ being then unknown), might be carried with other drugs and spices up the _Red Sea_ to _Joddah_, the port of _Mekka_, or else to _Tor_ or _Sues_, towns at the bottom of the gulf; and from thence by karrawans to _Coptos_, but three days’ journey distant, so down the _Nile_ directly to _Alexandria_, where the SENTIMENT would be landed at the very foot of the great stair-case of the _Alexandrian_ library, ----and from that store-house it would be fetched. ------Bless me! what a trade was driven by the learned in those days! [Footnote 5.1: This book my father would never consent to publish; ’tis in manuscript, with some other tracts of his, in the family, all, or most of which will be printed in due time.] CHAPTER XIII ----Now my father had a way, a little like that of _Job’s_ (in case there ever was such a man----if not, there’s an end of the matter.---- Though, by the bye, because your learned men find some difficulty in fixing the precise æra in which so great a man lived; --whether, for instance, before or after the patriarchs, &c. ----to vote, therefore, that he never lived _at all_, is a little cruel, --’tis not doing as they would be done by, --happen that as it may) ----My father, I say, had a way, when things went extremely wrong with him, especially upon the first sally of his impatience, --of wondering why he was begot, --wishing himself dead; --sometimes worse: ----And when the provocation ran high, and grief touched his lips with more than ordinary powers --Sir, you scarce could have distinguished him from _Socrates_ himself. ----Every word would breathe the sentiments of a soul disdaining life, and careless about all its issues; for which reason, though my mother was a woman of no deep reading, yet the abstract of _Socrates’s_ oration, which my father was giving my uncle _Toby_, was not altogether new to her. --She listened to it with composed intelligence, and would have done so to the end of the chapter, had not my father plunged (which he had no occasion to have done) into that part of the pleading where the great philosopher reckons up his connections, his alliances, and children; but renounces a security to be so won by working upon the passions of his judges. --“I have friends --I have relations, --I have three desolate children,” --says _Socrates_.-- ----Then, cried my mother, opening the door, ----you have one more, Mr. _Shandy_, than I know of. By heaven! I have one less, --said my father, getting up and walking out of the room. CHAPTER XIV ----They are _Socrates’s_ children, said my uncle _Toby_. He has been dead a hundred years ago, replied my mother.