But I forget my uncle _Toby_, whom all this while we have left knocking the ashes out of his tobacco-pipe. His humour was of that particular species, which does honour to our atmosphere; and I should have made no scruple of ranking him amongst one of the first-rate productions of it, had not there appeared too many strong lines in it of a family-likeness, which shewed that he derived the singularity of his temper more from blood, than either wind or water, or any modifications or combinations of them whatever: And I have, therefore, oft-times wondered, that my father, tho’ I believe he had his reasons for it, upon his observing some tokens of eccentricity, in my course, when I was a boy, --should never once endeavour to account for them in this way: for all the SHANDY FAMILY were of an original character throughout: ----I mean the males, --the females had no character at all, --except, indeed, my great aunt DINAH, who, about sixty years ago, was married and got with child by the coachman, for which my father, according to his hypothesis of christian names, would often say, She might thank her godfathers and godmothers. It will seem very strange, ----and I would as soon think of dropping a riddle in the reader’s way, which is not my interest to do, as set him upon guessing how it could come to pass, that an event of this kind, so many years after it had happened, should be reserved for the interruption of the peace and unity, which otherwise so cordially subsisted, between my father and my uncle _Toby_. One would have thought, that the whole force of the misfortune should have spent and wasted itself in the family at first, --as is generally the case. --But nothing ever wrought with our family after the ordinary way. Possibly at the very time this happened, it might have something else to afflict it; and as afflictions are sent down for our good, and that as this had never done the SHANDY FAMILY any good at all, it might lie waiting till apt times and circumstances should give it an opportunity to discharge its office. ----Observe, I determine nothing upon this. ----My way is ever to point out to the curious, different tracts of investigation, to come at the first springs of the events I tell; --not with a pedantic _Fescue_, --or in the decisive manner of _Tacitus_, who outwits himself and his reader; --but with the officious humility of a heart devoted to the assistance merely of the inquisitive; --to them I write, ----and by them I shall be read, ----if any such reading as this could be supposed to hold out so long, --to the very end of the world. Why this cause of sorrow, therefore, was thus reserved for my father and uncle, is undetermined by me. But how and in what direction it exerted itself so as to become the cause of dissatisfaction between them, after it began to operate, is what I am able to explain with great exactness, and is as follows: