Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 3).pdf/203

 much, as with one single quære of three words unseasonably popping in full upon him in his hobbyhorsical career.

'Twas all one to my uncle Toby,—he smoaked his pipe on, with unvaried composure,—his heart never intended offence to his brother,—and as his head could seldom find out where the sting of it lay,—he always gave my father the credit of cooling by himself.—He was five minutes and thirty-five seconds about it in the present case.

By all that's good! said my father, swearing, as he came to himself, and taking the oath out of Ernulphus's digest of curses,—(though to do my father justice it was a fault (as he told Dr. Slop in the affair of Ernulphus) which he as seldom committed as any man upon earth.)—By all that's good and great! brother