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Chapter 65 Though my father was hugely tickled with the subtleties of these learned discoursestwas still but like the anointing of a broken boneThe moment he got home, the weight of his afflictions returned upon him but so much the heavier, as is ever the case when the staff we lean on slips from under us.He became pensivewalked frequently forth to the fish-pondlet down one loop of his hatsighd oftenforbore to snapand, as the hasty sparks of temper, which occasion snapping, so much assist perspiration and digestion, as Hippocrates tells ushe had certainly fallen ill with the extinction of them, had not his thoughts been critically drawn off, and his health rescued by a fresh train of disquietudes left him, with a legacy of a thousand pounds, by my aunt Dinah. My father had scarce read the letter, when taking the thing by the right end, he instantly began to plague and puzzle his head how to lay it out mostly to the honour of his family.A hundred-and-fifty odd projects took possession of his brains by turnshe would do this, and that and tother He would go to Romehe would go to lawhe would buy stockhe would buy John Hobsons farmhe would new fore front his house, and add a new wing to make it evenThere was a fine water-mill on this side, and he would build a wind-mill on the other side of the river in full view to answer it- -But above all things in the world, he would inclose the great Ox-moor, and send out my brother Bobby immediately upon his travels. But as the sum was finite, and consequently could not do every thingand in truth very few of these to any purposeof all the projects which offered themselves upon this occasion, the two last seemed to make the deepest impression; and he would infallibly have determined upon both at once, but for the small inconvenience hinted at above, which absolutely put him under a necessity of deciding in favour either of the one or the other. This was not altogether so easy to be done; for though tis certain my father had long before set his heart upon this necessary part of my brothers education, and like a prudent man had actually determined to carry it into execution, with the first money that returned from the second creation of actions in the Missisippi-scheme, in which he was an adventureryet the Ox-moor, which was a fine, large, whinny, undrained, unimproved common, belonging to the Shandy-estate, had almost as old a claim upon him: he had long and affectionately set his heart upon turning it likewise to some account. But having never hitherto been pressed with such a conjuncture of things, as made it necessary to settle either the priority or justice of their claimslike a wise man he had refrained entering into any nice or critical examination about them: so that upon the dismission of every other project at this crisisthe two old projects, the Ox-moor and my Brother, divided him again; and so equal a match were they for each other, as to become the occasion of no small contest in the old gentlemans mindwhich of the two should be set ogoing first. People may laugh as they willbut the case was this. It had ever been the custom of the family, and by length of time was almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of it should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts before marriagenot only for the sake of bettering his own private parts, by the benefit of exercise and change of so much airbut simply for the mere delectation of his fancy, by the feather put into his cap, of having been abroadtantum valet, my father would say, quantum sonat. Now as this was a reasonable, and in course a most christian indulgenceto deprive him of it, without why or whereforeand thereby make an example of him, as the first Shandy unwhirld about Europe in a post-chaise, and only because he was a heavy ladwould 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 law-suit about fifteen years beforebesides the Lord knows what trouble and vexation. |
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