When Corporal Trim had brought his two mortars to bear, he was delighted with his handy-work above measure; and knowing what a pleasure it would be to his master to see them, he was not able to resist the desire he had of carrying them directly into his parlour.
Now next to the moral lesson I had in view in mentioning the affair of hinges , I had a speculative consideration arising out of it, and it is this.
Had the parlour door opened and turn’d upon its hinges, as a door should do—
Or for example, as cleverly as our government has been turning upon its hinges⸺(that is, in case things have all along gone well with your worship,—otherwise I give up my simile)—in this case, I say, there had been no danger either to master or man, in Corporal Trim’s peeping in: the moment he had beheld my father and my uncle Toby fast asleep—the respectfulness of his carriage was such, he would have retired as silent as death, and left them both in their armchairs, dreaming as happy as he had found them: but the thing was, morally speaking, so very impracticable, that for the many years in which this hinge was suffered to be out of order, and amongst the hourly grievances my father submitted to upon its account—this was one; that he never folded his arms to take his nap after dinner, but the thoughts of being unavoidably awakened by the first person who should open the door, was always uppermost in his imagination, and so incessantly stepp’d in betwixt him and the first balmy presage of his repose, as to rob him, as he often declared, of the whole sweets of it.
“ When things move upon bad hinges , an’ please your lordships, how can it be otherwise? ”