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

Volume IV, Chapter 35

258 of 315 · 2 min of reading

NOW as widow Wadman did love my uncle Toby----and my uncle Toby did not love widow Wadman, there was nothing for widow Wadman to do, but to go on and love my uncle Toby----or let it alone.

Widow Wadman would do neither the one or the other.

----Gracious heaven!----but I forget I am a little of her temper myself; for whenever it so falls out, which it sometimes does about the equinoxes, that an earthly goddess is so much this, and that, and t’other, that I cannot eat my breakfast for her----and that she careth not three halfpence whether I eat my breakfast or no----

----Curse on her! and so I send her to Tartary, and from Tartary to Terra del Fuogo, and so on to the devil: in short, there is not an infernal nitch where I do not take her divinityship and stick it.

But as the heart is tender, and the passions in these tides ebb and flow ten times in a minute, I instantly bring her back again; and as I do all things in extremes, I place her in the very center of the milky-way----

Brightest of stars! thou wilt shed thy influence upon some one----

----The duce take her and her influence too----for at that word I lose all patience----much good may it do him!----By all that is hirsute and gashly! I cry, taking off my furr’d cap, and twisting it round my finger----I would not give sixpence for a dozen such!

----But ’tis an excellent cap too (putting it upon my head, and pressing it close to my ears)--and warm--and soft; especially if you stroke it the right way--but alas! that will never be my luck----(so here my philosophy is shipwreck’d again.)

----No; I shall never have a finger in the pye (so here I break my metaphor)----

Crust and Crumb

Inside and out

Top and bottom----I detest it, I hate it, I repudiate it----I’m sick at the sight of it----

’Tis all pepper, garlick, speak-punctuation:, salt, and devil’s dung----by the great arch-cooks of cooks, who does nothing, I think, from morning to night, but sit down by the fire-side and invent inflammatory dishes for us, I would not touch it for the world----

----O Tristram! Tristram!_ cried Jenny._

O Jenny! Jenny!_ replied I, and so went on with the thirty-sixth chapter.

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End of part 258 of 315