Holla!⸺you, chairman!⸺here’s sixpence⸺do step into that bookseller’s shop, and call me a day-tall critick. I am very willing to give any one of ’em a crown to help me with his tackling, to get my father and my uncle Toby off the stairs, and to put them to bed.
—’Tis even high time; for except a short nap, which they both got whilst Trim was boring the jackboots—and which, by the by, did my father no sort of good, upon the score of the bad hinge—they have not else shut their eyes, since nine hours before the time that Dr. Slop was led into the back parlour in that dirty pickle by Obadiah .
Was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this—and to take up—Truce.
I will not finish that sentence till I have made an observation upon the strange state of affairs between the reader and myself, just as things stand at present—an observation never applicable before to any one biographical writer since the creation of the world, but to myself—and I believe, will never hold good to any other, until its final destruction—and therefore, for the very novelty of it alone, it must be worth your worships attending to.
I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelvemonth; and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my fourth volume—and no farther than to my first day’s life—’tis demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty-four days more life to write just now, than when I first set out; so that instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been doing at it—on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back—was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this—And why not?⸺and the transactions