from tearing the very flesh off your bones in contestation, “Whether that year is not always the last cast-year of the last cast-almanac”⸺I tell you plainly it was; but from a different reason than you wot of⸺
⸺It was the year next him⸺which being, the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and twelve, when the Duke of Ormond was playing the devil in Flanders ⸺the corporal took it, and set out with it afresh on his expedition to Bohemia .
The Story of the King of Bohemia and His Seven Castles, Continued
In the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and twelve, there was, an’ please your honour⸺
⸺To tell thee truly, Trim , quoth my uncle Toby , any other date would have pleased me much better, not only on account of the sad stain upon our history that year, in marching off our troops, and refusing to cover the siege of Quesnoi , though Fagel was carrying on the works with such incredible vigour—but likewise on the score, Trim , of thy own story; because if there are—and which, from what thou hast dropt, I partly suspect to be the fact—if there are giants in it⸺
There is but one, an’ please your honour⸺
⸺’Tis as bad as twenty, replied my uncle Toby ⸺thou should’st have carried him back some seven or eight hundred years out of harm’s way, both of critics and other people: and therefore I would advise thee, if ever thou tellest it again⸺
⸺If I live, an’ please your honour, but once to get through it, I will never tell it again, quoth Trim , either to man, woman, or child⸺Poo—poo! said my uncle Toby —but with accents of such sweet encouragement did he utter it, that the corporal went on with his story with more alacrity than ever.