CHAPTER XXXI

If anything in this world, which my father said, could have provoked my uncle _Toby_, during the time he was in love, it was the perverse use my father was always making of an expression of _Hilarion_ the hermit; who, in speaking of his abstinence, his watchings, flagellations, and other instrumental parts of his religion--would say--tho’ with more facetiousness than became an hermit-- “That they were the means he used, to make his _ass_ (meaning his body) leave off kicking.”

It pleased my father well; it was not only a laconick way of expressing----but of libelling, at the same time, the desires and appetites of the lower part of us; so that for many years of my father’s life, ’twas his constant mode of expression--he never used the word _passions_ once--but _ass_ always instead of them ----So that he might be said truly, to have been upon the bones, or the back of his own ass, or else of some other man’s, during all that time.

I must here observe to you the difference betwixt

My father’s ass and my hobby-horse--in order to keep characters as separate as may be, in our fancies as we go along.

For my hobby-horse, if you recollect a little, is no way a vicious beast; he has scarce one hair or lineament of the ass about him----’Tis the sporting little filly-folly which carries you out for the present hour--a maggot, a butterfly, a picture, a fiddlestick--an uncle _Toby’s_ siege--or an _anything_, which a man makes a shift to get a-stride on, to canter it away from the cares and solicitudes of life--’Tis as useful a beast as is in the whole creation--nor do I really see how the world would do without it----

----But for my father’s ass------oh! mount him--mount him--mount him--(that’s three times, is it not?)--mount him not: --’tis a beast concupiscent--and foul befal the man, who does not hinder him from kicking.

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