CHAPTER XIV

What a jovial and a merry world would this be, may it please your worships, but for that inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief, discontent, melancholy, large jointures, impositions, and lies!

Doctor _Slop_, like a son of a w----, as my father called him for it, --to exalt himself, --debased me to death, --and made ten thousand times more of _Susannah’s_ accident, than there was any grounds for; so that in a week’s time, or less, it was in everybody’s mouth, _That poor Master Shandy_ * * * * * * * * entirely. --And FAME, who loves to double everything, --in three days more, had sworn, positively she saw it, --and all the world, as usual, gave credit to her evidence---- “That the nursery window had not only * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ;----but that * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ’s also.”

Could the world have been sued like a BODY-CORPORATE, --my father had brought an action upon the case, and trounced it sufficiently; but to fall foul of individuals about it----as every soul who had mentioned the affair, did it with the greatest pity imaginable; ----’twas like flying in the very face of his best friends: ----And yet to acquiesce under the report, in silence--was to acknowledge it openly, --at least in the opinion of one half of the world; and to make a bustle again, in contradicting it, --was to confirm it as strongly in the opinion of the other half.------

----Was ever poor devil of a country gentleman so hampered? said my father.

I would shew him publickly, said my uncle _Toby_, at the market cross.

----’Twill have no effect, said my father.

## CHAPTER XV ----I’ll put him, however, into breeches, said my father, --let the world say what it will.

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