I think there must certainly have been a mixture of ill-luck in it, that the reasons on both sides should happen to be so equally balanced by each other; for though my father weigh’d them in all humours and conditions⸻spent many an anxious hour in the most profound and abstracted meditation upon what was best to be done—reading books of farming one day⸻books of travels another⸺laying aside all passion whatever—viewing the arguments on both sides in all their lights and circumstances—communing every day with my uncle Toby —arguing with Yorick , and talking over the whole affair of the Ox-moor with Obadiah ⸻yet nothing in all that time appeared so strongly in behalf of the one, which was not either strictly applicable to the other, or at least so far counterbalanced by some consideration of equal weight, as to keep the scales even.
For to be sure, with proper helps, and in the hands of some people, though the Ox-moor would undoubtedly have made a different appearance in the world from what it did, or ever could do in the condition it lay⸺yet every tittle of this was true, with regard to my brother Bobby ⸺let