Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 3).pdf/137

 any defence against the force of this ridicule, but that of redoubling the vehemence of smoaking his pipe; in doing which, he raised so dense a vapour one night after supper, that it set my father, who was a little phthisical, into a suffocating fit of violent coughing: my uncle Toby leap'd up without feeling the pain upon his groin,—and, with infinite pity, stood beside his brother's chair, tapping his back with one hand, and holding his head with the other, and from time to time, wiping his eyes with a clean cambrick handkerchief, which he pull'd out of his pocket.—The affectionate and endearing manner in which my uncle Toby did these little offices,—cut my father thro' his reins, for the pain he had just been giving him.—May my brains be knock'd out with a battering ram or a catapulta, I care not which,