above, which absolutely put him under a necessity of deciding in favour either of the one or the other.
This was not altogether so easy to be done; for though ’tis certain my father had long before set his heart upon this necessary part of my brother’s education, and like a prudent man had actually determined to carry it into execution, with the first money that returned from the second creation of actions in the Missisippi -scheme, in which he was an adventurer⸺yet the Ox-moor , which was a fine, large, whinny, undrained, unimproved common, belonging to the Shandy -estate, had almost as old a claim upon him: he had long and affectionately set his heart upon turning it likewise to some account.
But having never hitherto been pressed with such a conjuncture of things, as made it necessary to settle either the priority or justice of their claims⸺like a wise man he had refrained entering into any nice or critical examination about them: so that upon the dismission of every other project at this crisis⸻the two old projects, the Ox-moor and my Brother , divided him again; and so equal a match were they for each other, as to become the occasion of no small contest in the old gentleman’s mind—which of the two should be set o’going first.
⸺People may laugh as they will—but the case was this.
It had ever been the custom of the family, and by length of time was almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of it should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts before marriage—not only for the sake of bettering his own private parts, by the benefit of exercise and change of so much air—but simply for the mere delectation of his fancy, by the feather put into his cap, of having been abroad— tantum valet , my father would say, quantum sonat .
Now as this was a reasonable, and in course a most christian indulgence⸺to deprive him of it, without why or wherefore⸺and