------------Shut the door. -------------------------------------- I was begot in the night, betwixt the first _Sunday_ and the first _Monday_ in the month of _March_, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighteen. I am positive I was. --But how I came to be so very particular in my account of a thing which happened before I was born, is owing to another small anecdote known only in our own family, but now made publick for the better clearing up this point. My father, you must know, who was originally a _Turkey_ merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county of ------, was, I believe, one of the most regular men in everything he did, whether ’twas matter of business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, --he had made it a rule for many years of his life, --on the first _Sunday-night_ of every month throughout the whole year, --as certain as ever the _Sunday-night_ came, ----to wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands: --And being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been speaking of, --he had likewise gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle _Toby_, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month. It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me to my grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which have no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could never hear the said clock wound up, ----but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably popped into her head--and _vice versâ_: ----Which strange combination of ideas, the sagacious _Locke_, who certainly understood the nature of these things better than most men, affirms to have produced more wry actions than all other sources of prejudice whatsoever. But this by the bye. Now it appears by a memorandum in my father’s pocket-book, which now lies upon the table, “That on _Lady-day_, which was on the 25th of the same month in which I date my geniture, ----my father set out upon his journey to _London_, with my eldest brother _Bobby_, to fix him at _Westminster_ school;” and, as it appears from the same authority, “That he did not get down to his wife and family till the _second week_ in _May_ following,” --it brings the thing almost to a certainty. However, what follows in the beginning of the next chapter, puts it beyond all possibility of doubt. ------But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all _December_, _January_, and _February?_ ----Why, Madam, --he was all that time afflicted with a Sciatica. CHAPTER V