
father finished his remark, - my uncle Toby fell a whistling Lillabullero, with
more zeal (though more out of tune) than usual. --
    What is become of my wife's thread-paper?
 

                                  Chap. XLII.

No matter, -- as an appendage to seamstressy, the thread-paper might be of some
consequence to my mother, - of none to my father, as a mark in Slawkenbergius.
Slawkenbergius in every page of him was a rich treasury of inexhaustible
knowledge to my father, - he could not open him amiss; and he would often say in
closing the book, that if all the arts and sciences in the world, with the books
which treated of them, were lost, -- should the wisdom and policies of
governments, he would say, through disuse, ever happen to be forgot, and all
that statesmen had wrote, or caused to be written, upon the strong or the weak
sides of courts and kingdoms, should they be forgot also, - and Slawkenbergius
only left, - there would be enough in him in all conscience, he would say, to
set the word a-going again. A treasure therefore was he indeed! an institute of
all that was necessary to be known of noses, and every thing else, -- at matin,
noon, and vespers was Hafen Slawkenbergius his recreation and delight: 'twas for
ever in his hands, - you would have sworn, Sir, it had been a canon's
prayer-book, - so worn, so glazed, so contrited and attrited was it with fingers
and with thumbs in all its parts, from one end even unto the other.
    I am not such a bigot to Slawkenbergius, as my father; - there is a fund in
him, no doubt; but in my opinion, the best, I don't say the most profitable, but
the most amusing part of Hafen Slawkenbergius, is his tales, -- and, considering
he was a German, many of them told not without fancy: -- these take up his
second book, containing nearly one half of his folio, and are comprehended in
ten decads, each decad containing ten tales. -- Philosophy is not built upon
tales; and therefore 'twas certainly wrong in Slawkenbergius to send them into
the world by that name; - there are a few of them in his eighth, ninth, and
tenth decads, which I own seem rather playful and sportive, than speculative, -
but in general they are to be looked upon by the learned as a detail of so many
