Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 5).pdf/57

 —I've gone a little about—no matter, 'tis for health—let us only carry it back in our mind to the mortality of Trim's hat.—"Are we not here now,—and gone in a moment?"—There was nothing in the sentence—'twas one of your self-evident truths we have the advantage of hearing every day; and if Trim had not trusted more to his hat than his head—he had made nothing at all of it.

"Are we not here now;"—continued the corporal, "and are we not"—(dropping his hat plumb upon the ground—and pausing, before he pronounced the word)—"gone! in a moment?" The descent of the hat was as if a heavy lump of clay had been kneaded into the crown of it.—Nothing could have expressed the sentiment of mortality, of which it was the type and forerunner, like it,—his hand seemed to vanish from under it,—it fell dead,—the corporal's eye fix'd upon it, as upon a