thereby make an example of him, as the first Shandy unwhirl’d about Europe in a post-chaise, and only because he was a heavy lad⸺would be using him ten times worse than a Turk.
On the other hand, the case of the Ox-moor was full as hard.
Exclusive of the original purchase-money, which was eight hundred pounds⸺it had cost the family eight hundred pounds more in a lawsuit about fifteen years before—besides the Lord knows what trouble and vexation.
It had been moreover in possession of the Shandy -family ever since the middle of the last century; and though it lay full in view before the house, bounded on one extremity by the water-mill, and on the other by the projected windmill, spoken of above—and for all these reasons seemed to have the fairest title of any part of the estate to the care and protection of the family—yet by an unaccountable fatality, common to men, as well as the ground they tread on⸺it had all along most shamefully been overlook’d; and to speak the truth of it, had suffered so much by it, that it would have made any man’s heart have bled ( Obadiah said) who understood the value of the land, to have rode over it, and only seen the condition it was in.
However, as neither the purchasing this tract of ground⸺nor indeed the placing of it where it lay, were either of them, properly speaking, of my father’s doing⸺he had never thought himself anyway concerned in the affair⸻till the fifteen years before, when the breaking out of that cursed lawsuit mentioned above (and which had arose about its boundaries)⸻which being altogether my father’s own act and deed, it naturally awakened every other argument in its favour, and upon summing them all up together, he saw, not merely in interest, but in honour, he was bound to do something for it⸺and that now or never was the time.