 I was in the middle of my story.
    -- Writers of my stamp have one principle in common with painters. Where an
exact copying makes our pictures less striking, we choose the less evil; deeming
it even more pardonable to trespass against truth, than beauty. This is to be
understood cum grano salis; but be it as it will, - as the parallel is made more
for the sake of letting the apostrophe cool, than any thing else, - 'tis not
very material whether upon any other score the reader approves of it or not.
    In the latter end of the third year, my uncle Toby perceiving that the
parameter and semi-parameter of the conic section, angered his wound, he left
off the study of projectiles in a kind of a huff, and betook himself to the
practical part of fortification only; the pleasure of which, like a spring held
back, returned upon him with redoubled force.
    It was in this year that my uncle began to break in upon the daily
regularity of a clean shirt, -- to dismiss his barber unshaven, -- and to allow
his surgeon scarce time sufficient to dress his wound, concerning himself so
little about it, as not to ask him once in seven times dressing how it went on:
When, lo! - all of a sudden, for the change was as quick as lightening, he began
to sigh heavily for his recovery, - complain'd to my father, grew impatient with
the surgeon; - and one morning as he heard his foot coming up stairs, he shut up
his books, and thrust aside his instruments, in order to expostulate with him
upon the protraction of his cure, which, he told him, might surely have been
accomplished at least by that time: - He dwelt long upon the miseries he had
undergone, and the sorrows of his four years melancholy imprisonment; - adding,
that had it not been for the kind looks, and fraternal chearings of the best of
brothers, - he had long since sunk under his misfortunes. - My father was by: My
uncle Toby's eloquence brought tears into his eyes; - 'twas unexpected; - My
uncle Toby, by nature, was not eloquent; -- it had the greater effect. - The
surgeon was confounded; - not that there wanted grounds for such, or greater,
marks of impatience, - but 'twas unexpected too; in the four years he had
attended him, he had never seen any thing like it in my uncle Toby's carriage; -
he had never once dropp'
