To avoid all and every one of these errors in giving you my uncle _Toby’s_ character, I am determined to draw it by no mechanical help whatever; ----nor shall my pencil be guided by any one wind-instrument which ever was blown upon, either on this, or on the other side of the _Alps_; --nor will I consider either his repletions or his discharges, --or touch upon his Non-naturals--but, in a word, I will draw my uncle _Toby’s_ character from his HOBBY-HORSE. [Footnote 1.3: Pentagraph, an instrument to copy Prints and Pictures mechanically, and in any proportion.] CHAPTER XXIV If I was not morally sure that the reader must be out of all patience for my uncle _Toby’s_ character, ----I would here previously have convinced him that there is no instrument so fit to draw such a thing with, as that which I have pitch’d upon. A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, tho’ I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind; and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of electrified bodies, --and that, by means of the heated parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with the back of the HOBBY-HORSE, --by long journeys and much friction, it so happens, that the body of the rider is at length fill’d as full of HOBBY-HORSICAL matter as it can hold; ----so that if you are able to give but a clear description of the nature of the one, you may form a pretty exact notion of the genius and character of the other. Now the HOBBY-HORSE which my uncle _Toby_ always rode upon, was in my opinion a HOBBY-HORSE well worth giving a description of, if it was only upon the score of his great singularity; --for you might have travelled from _York_ to _Dover_, --from _Dover_ to _Penzance_ in _Cornwall_, and from _Penzance_ to _York_ back again, and not have seen such another upon the road; or if you had seen such a one, whatever haste you had been in, you must infallibly have stopp’d to have taken a view of him. Indeed, the gait and figure of him was so strange, and so utterly unlike was he, from his head to his tail, to any one of the whole species, that it was now and then made a matter of dispute, ----whether he was really a HOBBY-HORSE or no: but as the Philosopher would use no other argument to the Sceptic, who disputed with him against the reality of motion, save that of rising up upon his legs, and walking across the room; --so would my uncle _Toby_ use no other argument to prove his HOBBY-HORSE was a HOBBY-HORSE indeed, but by getting upon his back and riding him about; --leaving the world, after that, to determine the point as it thought fit. In good truth, my uncle _Toby_ mounted him with so much pleasure, and he carried my uncle _Toby_ so well, ----that he troubled his head very little with what the world either said or thought about it.