The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman · Laurence Sterne

Volume IV, Chapter 27

250 of 315 · 1 min of reading

----Bon jour!----good morrow!----so you have got your cloak on betimes!----but ’tis a cold morning, and you judge the matter rightly----’tis better to be well mounted, than go o’ foot----and obstructions in the glands are dangerous----And how goes it with thy concubine--thy wife,--and thy little ones o’ both sides? and when did you hear from the old gentleman and lady--your sister, aunt, uncle, and cousins----I hope they have got better of their colds, coughs, claps, tooth-aches, fevers, stranguries, sciaticas, swellings, and sore eyes.

----What a devil of an apothecary! to take so much blood--give such a vile purge--puke--poultice--plaister--night-draught--clyster--blister?----And why so many grains of calomel? santa Maria! and such a dose of opium! periclitating, pardi! the whole family of ye, from head to tail----By my great-aunt Dinah’s old black velvet mask! I think there is no occasion for it.

Now this being a little bald about the chin, by frequently putting off and on, before she was got with child by the coachman--not one of our family would wear it after. To cover the MASK afresh, was more than the mask was worth----and to wear a mask which was bald, or which could be half seen through, was as bad as having no mask at all----

This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that in all our numerous family, for these four generations, we count no more than one archbishop, a Welch judge, some three or four aldermen, and a single mountebank----

In the sixteenth century, we boast of no less than a dozen alchymists.

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End of part 250 of 315