CHAPTER XXIV
----I am half distracted, captain _Shandy_, said Mrs. _Wadman_, holding up her cambrick handkerchief to her left eye, as she approach’d the door of my uncle _Toby’s_ sentry-box----a mote----or sand----or something ----I know not what, has got into this eye of mine----do look into it--it is not in the white--
In saying which, Mrs. _Wadman_ edged herself close in beside my uncle _Toby_, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up ----Do look into it--said she.
Honest soul! thou didst look into it with as much innocency of heart, as ever child look’d into a raree-shew-box; and ’twere as much a sin to have hurt thee.
----If a man will be peeping of his own accord into things of that nature ----I’ve nothing to say to it----
My uncle _Toby_ never did: and I will answer for him, that he would have sat quietly upon a sofa from _June_ to _January_ (which, you know, takes in both the hot and cold months), with an eye as fine as the _Thracian_[8.4] _Rodope’s_ beside him, without being able to tell, whether it was a black or blue one.
The difficulty was to get my uncle _Toby_ to look at one at all.
’Tis surmounted. And
I see him yonder with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes falling out of it--looking--and looking--then rubbing his eyes--and looking again, with twice the good-nature that ever _Gallileo_ look’d for a spot in the sun.
----In vain! for by all the powers which animate the organ ----Widow _Wadman’s_ left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right----there is neither mote, or sand, or dust, or chaff, or speck, or particle of opake matter floating in it --There is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! but one lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part of it, in all directions, into thine----
----If thou lookest, uncle _Toby_, in search of this mote one moment longer----thou art undone.
[Footnote 8.4: _Rodope Thracia_ tam inevitabili fascino instructa, tam exactè oculus intuens attraxit, ut si in illam quis incidisset, fieri non posset, quin caperetur. ----I know not who.]
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