Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 4).pdf/175

 may be wrote on both sides of the question—all that concerns me as an historian, is to represent the matter of fact, and render it credible to the reader, that the hiatus in Phutatoriuss breeches was sufficiently wide to receive the chesnut;—and that the chesnut, some how or other, did fall perpendicularly and piping hot into it, without Phutatoriuss perceiving it, or any one else at that time.

The genial warmth which the chesnut imparted, was not undelectable for the first twenty or five and twenty seconds,—and did no more than gently solicit Phutatorius's attention towards the part:—But the heat gradually increasing, and in a few seconds more getting beyond the point of all sober pleasure, and then advancing with all speed into the regions of pain,—the soul of Phutatorius, toge-