The wound in my uncle Toby’s groin, which he received at the siege of Namur , rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought expedient he should return to England , in order, if possible, to be set to rights.
He was four years totally confined,—part of it to his bed, and all of it to his room: and in the course of his cure, which was all that time in hand, suffer’d unspeakable miseries,—owing to a succession of exfoliations from the os pubis , and the outward edge of that part of the coxendix called the os illium ,⸺both which bones were dismally crush’d, as much by the irregularity of the stone, which I told you was broke off the parapet,—as by its size,—(though it was pretty large) which inclined the surgeon all along to think, that the great injury which it had done my uncle Toby’s groin, was more owing to the gravity of the stone itself, than to the projectile force of it,—which he would often tell him was a great happiness.
My father at that time was just beginning business in London , and had taken a house;—and as the truest friendship and cordiality subsisted between the two brothers,—and that my father thought my uncle Toby could no where be so well nursed and taken care of as in his own house,⸺he assign’d him the very best apartment in it.—And what was a much more sincere mark of his affection still, he would never suffer a friend or an acquaintance to step into the house on any occasion, but he would take him by the hand, and lead him upstairs to see his brother Toby , and chat an hour by his bedside.
The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it;—my uncle’s visitors at least thought so, and in their daily calls upon him, from the courtesy arising out of that belief, they would frequently turn the discourse to that subject,—and from that subject the discourse would generally roll on to the siege itself.