It was a thousand pities⸺though I believe, an’ please your honour, I am going to say but a foolish kind of a thing for a soldier⸺
A soldier, cried my uncle Toby , interrupting the corporal, is no more exempt from saying a foolish thing, Trim , than a man of letters⸺But not so often, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal⸺My uncle Toby gave a nod.
It was a thousand pities then, said the corporal, casting his eye upon Dunkirk , and the mole, as Servius Sulpicius , in returning out of Asia (when he sailed from Ægina towards Megara ), did upon Corinth and Pyreus ⸺
—“It was a thousand pities, an’ please your honour, to destroy these works⸺and a thousand pities to have let them stood.”⸺
⸺Thou art right, Trim , in both cases; said my uncle Toby .⸺This, continued the corporal, is the reason, that from the beginning of their demolition to the end⸺I have never once whistled, or sung, or laugh’d, or cry’d, or talk’d of past done deeds, or told your honour one story good or bad⸺
⸺Thou hast many excellencies, Trim , said my uncle Toby , and I hold it not the least of them, as thou happenest to be a storyteller, that of the number thou hast told me, either to amuse me in my painful hours, or divert me in my grave ones—thou hast seldom told me a bad one⸺
⸺Because, an’ please your honour, except one of a King of Bohemia and his seven castles ,—they are all true; for they are about myself⸺