 of it; - my uncle's
visitors at least thought so, and in their daily calls upon him, from the
courtesy arising out of that belief, they would frequently turn the discourse to
that subject, - and from that subject the discourse would generally roll on to
the siege itself.
    These conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle Toby received great
relief from them, and would have received much more, but that they brought him
into some unforeseen perplexities, which, for three months together, retarded
his cure greatly; and if he had not hit upon an expedient to extricate himself
out of them, I verily believe they would have laid him in his grave.
    What these perplexities of my uncle Toby were, -- 'tis impossible for you to
guess; - if you could, - I should blush; not as a relation, - not as a man, -
nor even as a woman, - but I should blush as an author; inasmuch as I set no
small store by myself upon this very account, that my reader has never yet been
able to guess at any thing. And in this, Sir, I am of so nice and singular a
humour, that if I thought you was able to form the least judgment or probable
conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page, - I would tear it
out of my book.
 
                            End of the First Volume.
 

                                   Volume II.

                                    Chap. I.

I have begun a new book, on purpose that I might have room enough to explain the
nature of the perplexities in which my uncle Toby was involved, from the many
discourses and interrogations about the siege of Namur, where he received his
wound.
    I must remind the reader, in case he has read the history of King William's
wars, - but if he has not, - I then inform him, that one of the most memorable
attacks in that siege, was that which was made by the English and Dutch upon the
point of the advanced counterscarp, before the gate of St. Nicolas, which
inclosed the great sluice or water-stop, where the English were terribly exposed
to the shot of the counter-guard and demi-bastion of St. Roch: The issue of
which hot dispute, in three words, was this; That the Dutch lodged themselves
upon the counter-guard, - and that the English made themselves masters of the
covered way before St. Nicolas's gate, notwithstanding the gallantry of the
French officers, who exposed themselves upon the glacis sword in hand.
    As this was the principal
