
side of his nose leisurely with the flat part of his fore finger, - inserted his
hand cautiously betwixt his head and the cawl of his wig, - look'd at both sides
of every guinea, as he parted with it, - and seldom could get to the end of the
fifty pounds, without pulling out his handkerchief, and wiping his temples.
    Defend me, gracious heaven! from those persecuting spirits who make no
allowances for these workings within us. - Never, - O never may I lay down in
their tents, who cannot relax the engine, and feel pity for the force of
education, and the prevalence of opinions long derived from ancestors!
    For three generations at least, this tenet in favour of long noses had
gradually been taking root in our family. -- TRADITION was all along on its
side, and INTEREST was every half year stepping in to strengthen it; so that the
whimsicality of my father's brain was far from having the whole honour of this,
as it had of almost all his other strange notions. - For in a great measure he
might be said to have suck'd this in, with his mother's milk. He did his part
however. -- If education planted the mistake, (in case it was one) my father
watered it, and ripened it to perfection.
    He would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon the subject, that he
did not conceive how the greatest family in England could stand it out against
an uninterrupted succession of six or seven short noses. - And for the contrary
reason, he would generally add, That it must be one of the greatest problems in
civil life, where the same number of long and jolly noses, following one another
in a direct line, did not raise and hoist it up into the best vacancies in the
kingdom. -- He would often boast that the Shandy family rank'd very high in king
Harry the VIIIth's time, but owed its rise to no state engine, - he would say, -
but to that only; - but that, like other families, he would add, - it had felt
the turn of the wheel, and had never recovered the blow of my great
grandfather's nose. -- It was an ace of clubs indeed, he would cry, shaking his
head, -- and as vile as one for an unfortunate family, as ever turn'd up trumps.
    -- Fair and softly, gentle reader! -- where is thy fancy carrying thee? --
If there is truth
