Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 4).pdf/207

 years before—besides the Lord knows what trouble and vexation.

It had been moreover in possession of the Shandy-family ever since the middle of the last century; and though it lay full in view before the house, bounded on one extremity by the water-mill, and on the other by the projected windmill spoken of above,—and for all these reasons seemed to have the fairest title of any part of the estate to the care and protection of the family—yet by an unaccountable fatality, common to men, as well as the ground they tread on,—it had all along most shamefully been over-look'd; and to speak the truth of it, had suffered so much by it, that it would have made any man's heart have bled (Obadiah said) who understood the value of land, to have rode over