The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman/Volume 5/Chapter 17
CHAP. XVII.
———' Twas nothing,—I did not lose two drops of blood by it—'twas not worth calling in a surgeon, had he lived next door to us—thousands suffer by choice, what I did by accident.—Doctor Slop made ten times more of it, than there was occasion:—some men rise, by the art of hanging great weights upon small wires,—and I am this day (August the 10th, 1761) paying part of the price of this man's reputation.—O 'twould provoke a stone, to see how things are carried on in this world!—The chamber-maid had left no ******* *** under the bed:—Cannot you contrive, master, quoth Susannah, lifting up the sash with one hand, as she spoke, and helping me up into the window seat with the other,—cannot you manage, my dear, for a single time to **** *** ** *** ******?
I was five years old.—Susannah did not consider that nothing was well hung in our family,—so slap came the sash down like lightening upon us;—Nothing is left,—cried Susannah,—nothing is left—for me, but to run my country.———
My uncle Toby's house was a much kinder sanctuary; and so Susannah fled to it.