Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 3).pdf/139

 uncle Toby took it of him in the field,—convinced him, that if the King of Spain and the Emperor went together by the ears, that England and France and Holland must, by force of their pre-engagements, all enter the lists too;—and if so, he would say, the combatants, brother Toby, as sure as we are alive, will fall to it again, pell-mell, upon the old prize-fighting stage of Flanders;—then what will you do with your Italian bridge?

—We will go on with it then, upon the old model, cried my uncle Toby.

When corporal Trim had about half finished it in that stile,—my uncle Toby found out a capital defect in it, which he had never thoroughly considered before. It turned, it seems, upon hinges at both ends of it, opening in the middle, one