The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman/Volume 8/Chapter 11

by Laurence Sterne

CHAP. XI.

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 centre 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,
'Tis all garlick,
'Tis all staragen,
'Tis all salt, and
'Tis all devil's dung—by the great arch cook of cooks, who does nothing, I think, from morning to night, but sit down by the fire-side and invent inflammatory^{[errata 1]} 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 twelfth chapter.

 

1. Original: inflamgatory was amended to inflammatory: detail