CHAPTER VII

Whilst my uncle _Toby_ was whistling _Lillabullero_ to my father, --Dr. _Slop_ was stamping, and cursing and damning at _Obadiah_ at a most dreadful rate, ------it would have done your heart good, and cured you, Sir, for ever of the vile sin of swearing, to have heard him; I am determined therefore to relate the whole affair to you.

When Dr. _Slop’s_ maid delivered the green bays bag with her master’s instruments in it, to _Obadiah_, she very sensibly exhorted him to put his head and one arm through the strings, and ride with it slung across his body: so undoing the bow-knot, to lengthen the strings for him, without any more ado, she helped him on with it. However, as this, in some measure, unguarded the mouth of the bag, lest anything should bolt out in galloping back, at the speed _Obadiah_ threatened, they consulted to take it off again: and in the great care and caution of their hearts, they had taken the two strings and tied them close (pursing up the mouth of the bag first) with half a dozen hard knots, each of which _Obadiah_, to make all safe, had twitched and drawn together with all the strength of his body.

This answered all that _Obadiah_ and the maid intended; but was no remedy against some evils which neither he or she foresaw. The instruments, it seems, as tight as the bag was tied above, had so much room to play in it, towards the bottom (the shape of the bag being conical) that _Obadiah_ could not make a trot of it, but with such a terrible jingle, what with the _tire tête_, _forceps_, and _squirt_, as would have been enough, had _Hymen_ been taking a jaunt that way, to have frightened him out of the country; but when _Obadiah_ accelerated his motion, and from a plain trot assayed to prick his coach-horse into a full gallop----by Heaven! Sir, the jingle was incredible.

As _Obadiah_ had a wife and three children----the turpitude of fornication, and the many other political ill consequences of this jingling, never once entered his brain, ----he had however his objection, which came home to himself, and weighed with him, as it has oft-times done with the greatest patriots. ----“_The poor fellow, Sir, was not able to hear himself whistle._”

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