the least probable conjecture: You will read the whole of it⸻not this year, for I am hastening to the story of my uncle Toby’s amours—but you will read it in the collection of those which have arose out of the journey across this plain—and which, therefore, I call my
plain stories.
How far my pen has been fatigued, like those of other travellers, in this journey of it, over so barren a track—the world must judge—but the traces of it, which are now all set o’ vibrating together this moment, tell me ’tis the most fruitful and busy period of my life; for as I had made no convention with my man with the gun, as to time—by stopping and talking to every soul I met, who was not in a full trot—joining all parties before me—waiting for every soul behind—hailing all those who were coming through crossroads—arresting all kinds of beggars, pilgrims, fiddlers, friars⸺not passing by a woman in a mulberry-tree without commending her legs, and tempting her into conversation with a pinch of snuff⸻In short, by seizing every handle, of what size or shape soever, which chance held out to me in this journey—I turned my plain into a city —I was always in company, and with great variety too; and as my mule loved society as much as myself, and had some proposals always on his part to offer to every beast he met—I am confident we could have passed through Pall-Mall , or St. James’s -Street for a month together, with fewer adventures—and seen less of human nature.
O! there is that sprightly frankness, which at once unpins every plait of a Languedocian’s dress—that whatever is beneath it, it looks so like the simplicity which poets sing of in better days—I will delude my fancy, and believe it is so.
’Twas in the road betwixt Nismes and Lunel , where there is the best Muscatto wine in all France , and which by the by belongs to the honest canons of Montpellier —and foul befall the man who has drank it at their table, who grudges them a drop of it.