IV

Heartily and from my soul, to the protection of that Being who will injure none of us, do I recommend you and your affairs,⁠—so God bless you;⁠—only next month, if any one of you should gnash his teeth, and storm and rage at me, as some of you did last May (in which I remember the weather was very hot)⁠—don’t be exasperated, if I pass it by again with good temper,⁠—being determined as long as I live or write (which in my case means the same thing) never to give the honest gentleman a worse word or a worse wish than my uncle Toby gave the fly which buzz’d about his nose all dinnertime ,⁠⸻“Go,⁠—go, poor devil,” quoth he,⁠—“get thee gone,⁠—why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.”