But, of all the names in the universe, he had the most unconquerable aversion for TRISTRAM; --he had the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it of anything in the world, --thinking it could possibly produce nothing in _rerum naturâ_, but what was extremely mean and pitiful: So that in the midst of a dispute on the subject, in which, by the bye, he was frequently involved, ----he would sometimes break off in a sudden and spirited EPIPHONEMA, or rather EROTESIS, raised a third, and sometimes a full fifth above the key of the discourse, ----and demand it categorically of his antagonist, Whether he would take upon him to say, he had ever remembered, ----whether he had ever read, --or even whether he had ever heard tell of a man, called _Tristram_, performing anything great or worth recording? --No, --he would say, --TRISTRAM! --The thing is impossible. What could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a book to publish this notion of his to the world? Little boots it to the subtle speculatist to stand single in his opinions, --unless he gives them proper vent: --It was the identical thing which my father did: --for in the year sixteen, which was two years before I was born, he was at the pains of writing an express DISSERTATION simply upon the word _Tristram_, --shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the grounds of his great abhorrence to the name. When this story is compared with the title-page, --Will not the gentle reader pity my father from his soul? --to see an orderly and well-disposed gentleman, who tho’ singular, --yet inoffensive in his notions, --so played upon in them by cross purposes; ----to look down upon the stage, and see him baffled and overthrown in all his little systems and wishes; to behold a train of events perpetually falling out against him, and in so critical and cruel a way, as if they had purposedly been plann’d and pointed against him, merely to insult his speculations. ----In a word, to behold such a one, in his old age, ill-fitted for troubles, ten times in a day suffering sorrow; --ten times in a day calling the child of his prayers TRISTRAM! --Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which, to his ears, was unison to _Nincompoop_, and every name vituperative under heaven. ----By his ashes! I swear it, --if ever malignant spirit took pleasure, or busied itself in traversing the purposes of mortal man, --it must have been here; --and if it was not necessary I should be born before I was christened, I would this moment give the reader an account of it. CHAPTER XX