CHAPTER XXV

The wound in my uncle _Toby’s_ groin, which he received at the siege of _Namur_, rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought expedient he should return to _England_, in order, if possible, to be set to rights.

He was four years totally confined, --part of it to his bed, and all of it to his room: and in the course of his cure, which was all that time in hand, suffer’d unspeakable miseries, --owing to a succession of exfoliations from the _os pubis_, and the outward edge of that part of the _coxendix_ called the _os illium_, ----both which bones were dismally crush’d, as much by the irregularity of the stone, which I told you was broke off the parapet, --as by its size, --(tho’ it was pretty large) which inclined the surgeon all along to think, that the great injury which it had done my uncle _Toby’s_ groin, was more owing to the gravity of the stone itself, than to the projectile force of it, --which he would often tell him was a great happiness.

My father at that time was just beginning business in _London_, and had taken a house; --and as the truest friendship and cordiality subsisted between the two brothers, --and that my father thought my uncle _Toby_ could no where be so well nursed and taken care of as in his own house, ----he assign’d him the very best apartment in it. --And what was a much more sincere mark of his affection still, he would never suffer a friend or an acquaintance to step into the house on any occasion, but he would take him by the hand, and lead him up stairs to see his brother _Toby_, and chat an hour by his bedside.

The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain 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 anything. 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.

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