Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 3).pdf/178

 it over and over again with great application, studying every word and every syllable of it thro' and thro' in its most strict and literal interpretation,—he could still make nothing of it, that way. Mayhaps there is more meant, than is said in it, quoth my father.—Learned men, brother Toby, don't write dialogues upon long noses for nothing.—I'll study the mystic and the allegoric sense,—here is some room to turn a man's self in, brother.

My father read on.

Now, I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by Erasmus, the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic conveniences also, for that in a case of distress,—and for want of a pair of bellows, it will do excellently well, ad excitandum focum, (to stir up the fire.)