CHAPTER XIX

’Tis a pity, _Trim_, said my uncle _Toby_, resting with his hand upon the corporal’s shoulder, as they both stood surveying their works, --that we have not a couple of field-pieces to mount in the gorge of that new redoubt; ----’twould secure the lines all along there, and make the attack on that side quite complete: ----get me a couple cast, _Trim_.

Your honour shall have them, replied _Trim_, before to-morrow morning.

It was the joy of _Trim’s_ heart, --nor was his fertile head ever at a loss for expedients in doing it, to supply my uncle _Toby_ in his campaigns, with whatever his fancy called for; had it been his last crown, he would have sate down and hammered it into a paderero, to have prevented a single wish in his Master. The corporal had already, --what with cutting off the ends of my uncle _Toby’s_ spouts--hacking and chiseling up the sides of his leaden gutters, --melting down his pewter shaving-bason, --and going at last, like _Lewis_ the Fourteenth, on to the top of the church, for spare ends, &c. ----he had that very campaign brought no less than eight new battering cannons, besides three demi-culverins, into the field; my uncle _Toby’s_ demand for two more pieces for the redoubt, had set the corporal at work again; and no better resource offering, he had taken the two leaden weights from the nursery window: and as the sash pullies, when the lead was gone, were of no kind of use, he had taken them away also, to make a couple of wheels for one of their carriages.

He had dismantled every sash-window in my uncle _Toby’s_ house long before, in the very same way, --though not always in the same order; for sometimes the pullies have been wanted, and not the lead, --so then he began with the pullies, --and the pullies being picked out, then the lead became useless, --and so the lead went to pot too.

----A great MORAL might be picked handsomely out of this, but I have not time--’tis enough to say, wherever the demolition began, ’twas equally fatal to the sash window.

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