Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 4).pdf/142

 about the midwife—There she gave vent, said my uncle Toby—Vent! cried my father, looking up—

But what was all this, my dear Toby, to the injuries done us by my child's coming head foremost into the world, when all I wished in this general wreck of his frame, was to have saved this little casket unbroke, unrifled—

With all my precautions, how was my system turned topside turvy in the womb with my child! his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a pressure of 470 pounds averdupois weight acting so perpendicularly upon its apex—that at this hour 'tis ninety per Cent. insurance, that the fine network of the intellectual web be not rent and torn to a thousand tatters.