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Chapter 66 From this moment I am to be considered as heir-apparent to the Shandy familyand it is from this point properly, that the story of my Life and my Opinions sets out. With all my hurry and precipitation, I have but been clearing the ground to raise the buildingand such a building do I foresee it will turn out, as never was planned, and as never was executed since Adam. In less than five minutes I shall have thrown my pen into the fire, and the little drop of thick ink which is left remaining at the bottom of my ink-horn, after itI have but half a score things to do in the timeI have a thing to namea thing to lamenta thing to hopea thing to promise, and a thing to threatenI have a thing to supposea thing to declarea thing to conceala thing to choose, and a thing to pray for This chapter, therefore, I name the chapter of Thingsand my next chapter to it, that is, the first chapter of my next volume, if I live, shall be my chapter upon Whiskers, in order to keep up some sort of connection in my works. The thing I lament is, that things have crowded in so thick upon me, that I have not been able to get into that part of my work, towards which I have all the way looked forwards, with so much earnest desire; and that is the Campaigns, but especially the amours of my uncle Toby, the events of which are of so singular a nature, and so Cervantick a cast, that if I can so manage it, as to convey but the same impressions to every other brain, which the occurrences themselves excite in my ownI will answer for it the book shall make its way in the world, much better than its master has done before it.Oh Tristram! Tristram! can this but be once brought aboutthe credit, which will attend thee as an author, shall counterbalance the many evils will have befallen thee as a manthou wilt feast upon the onewhen thou hast lost all sense and remembrance of the other! No wonder I itch so much as I do, to get at these amoursThey are the choicest morsel of my whole story! and when I do get at emassure yourselves, good folks(nor do I value whose squeamish stomach takes offence at it) I shall not be at all nice in the choice of my words!and thats the thing I have to declare.I shall never get all through in five minutes, that I fearand the thing I hope is, that your worships and reverences are not offendedif you are, depend upont Ill give you something, my good gentry, next year to be offended atthats my dear Jennys waybut who my Jenny isand which is the right and which the wrong end of a woman, is the thing to be concealedit shall be told you in the next chapter but one to my chapter of Button-holesand not one chapter before. And now that you have just got to the end of these (According to the preceding Editions.) three volumesthe thing I have to ask is, how you feel your heads? my own akes dismally!as for your healths, I know, they are much better.True Shandeism, think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs, and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely through its channels, makes the wheel of life run long and cheerfully round. Was I left, like Sancho Panca, to choose my kingdom, it should not be maritimeor a kingdom of blacks to make a penny of;no, it should be a kingdom of hearty laughing subjects: And as the bilious and more saturnine passions, by creating disorders in the blood and humours, have as bad an influence, I see, upon the body politick as body naturaland as nothing but a habit of virtue can fully govern those passions, and subject them to reasonI should add to my prayerthat God would give my subjects grace to be as Wise as they were Merry; and then should I be the happiest monarch, and they are the happiest people under heaven. And so with this moral for the present, may it please your worships and your reverences, I take my leave of you till this time twelve-month, when, (unless this vile cough kills me in the mean time) Ill have another pluck at your beards, and lay open a story to the world you little dream of. End of the Second Volume. |
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