Though my father was a good natural philosopher,—yet he was something of a moral philosopher too; for which reason, when his tobacco-pipe snapp’d short in the middle,—he had nothing to do, as such, but to have taken hold of the two pieces, and thrown them gently upon the back of the fire.⸺He did no such thing;⸺he threw them with all the violence in the world;—and, to give the action still more emphasis,—he started upon both his legs to do it.
This looked something like heat;—and the manner of his reply to what my uncle Toby was saying, proved it was so.
—“Not choose,” quoth my father, (repeating my uncle Toby’s words) “to let a man come so near her!”⸺By Heaven, brother Toby! you would try the patience of Job ;—and I think I have the plagues of one already without it.⸺Why?⸺Where?⸺Wherein?⸺Wherefore?⸺Upon what account? replied my uncle Toby , in the utmost astonishment.—To think, said my father, of a man living to your age, brother, and knowing so little about women!⸺I know nothing at all about them,—replied my uncle Toby : And I think, continued he, that the shock I received the year after the demolition of Dunkirk , in my affair with widow Wadman ;—which shock you know I should not have received, but from my total ignorance of the sex,—has given me just cause to say, That I neither know nor do pretend to know anything about ’em or their concerns either.—Methinks, brother, replied my father, you might, at least, know so much as the right end of a woman from the wrong.
It is said in Aristotle’s Masterpiece , “That when a man doth think of anything which is past,⸺he looketh down upon the ground;⸺but that when he thinketh of something that is to come, he looketh up towards the heavens.”