’Tis a pity, cried my father one winter’s night, after a three hours’ painful translation of Slawkenbergius ⸺’tis a pity, cried my father, putting my mother’s thread-paper into the book for a mark, as he spoke⸺that truth, brother Toby , should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest siege.⸺
Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle Toby’s fancy, during the time of my father’s explanation of Prignitz to him⸻having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the bowling-green!⸻his body might as well have taken a turn there too—so that with all the semblance of a deep schoolman intent upon the medius terminus ⸻my uncle Toby was in fact as ignorant of the whole lecture, and all its pros and cons, as if my father had been translating Hafen Slawkenbergius from the Latin tongue into the Cherokee . But the word siege , like a talismanic power, in my father’s metaphor, wafting back my uncle Toby’s fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch—he open’d his ears⸺and my father observing that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to profit—my father with great pleasure began his sentence again⸺changing only the plan, and dropping the metaphor of the siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers my father apprehended from it.
’Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side, brother Toby ⸻considering what ingenuity these learned men have all shown in their solutions of noses.⸺Can noses be dissolved? replied my uncle Toby .
⸻My father thrust back his chair⸻rose up—put on his hat⸻took four long strides to the door⸻jerked it