CHAPTER IV

“It is with Love as with Cuckoldom”----the suffering party is at least the _third_, but generally the last in the house who knows anything about the matter: this comes, as all the world knows, from having half a dozen words for one thing; and so long, as what in this vessel of the human frame, is _Love_--may be _Hatred_, in that----_Sentiment_ half a yard higher----and _Nonsense_----------no, Madam, --not there ----I mean at the part I am now pointing to with my forefinger----how can we help ourselves?

Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle _Toby_ was the worst fitted, to have push’d his researches, thro’ such a contention of feelings; and he had infallibly let them all run on, as we do worse matters, to see what they would turn out----had not _Bridget’s_ pre-notification of them to _Susannah_, and _Susannah’s_ repeated manifestoes thereupon to all the world, made it necessary for my uncle _Toby_ to look into the affair.

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