Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 4).pdf/101

 events of this world lay open to us! Take pen and ink in hand, brother Toby, and calculate it fairly—I know no more of calculations than this balluster, said my uncle Toby, (striking short of it with his crutch, and hitting my father a desperate blow souse upon his shin-bone)—'Twas a hundred to one—cried my uncle Toby.—I thought, quoth my father, (rubbing his shin) you had known nothing of calculations, brother Toby.—'Twas a meer chance, said my uncle Toby—Then it adds one to the chapter—replied my father.

The double success of my father's repartees tickled off the pain of his shin at once—it was well it so fell out—(chance! again)—or the world to this day had never known the subject of my father's calculation—to guess it—there was no