Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 8).pdf/136

 It pleased my father well; it was not only a laconick way of expressing—but of libelling, at the same time, the desires and appetites of the lower part of us; so that for many years of my father's life, 'twas his constant mode of expression—he never used the word passions once—but ass always instead of them—So that he might be said truly, to have been upon the bones, or the back of his own ass, or else of some other man's, during all that time.

I must here observe to you, the difference betwixt

My father's ass

and my hobby-horse—in order to keep characters as separate as may be, in our fancies as we go along.