CHAPTER XVI

--Upon my honour, Sir, you have tore every bit of skin quite off the back of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle _Toby_--and you have crush’d all my knuckles into the bargain with them to a jelly. ’Tis your own fault, said Dr. _Slop_----you should have clinch’d your two fists together into the form of a child’s head as I told you, and sat firm. I did so, answered my uncle _Toby_. ----Then the points of my forceps have not been sufficiently arm’d, or the rivet wants closing--or else the cut in my thumb has made me a little aukward--or possibly--’Tis well, quoth my father, interrupting the detail of possibilities--that the experiment was not first made upon my child’s head-piece. ------It would not have been a cherry-stone the worse, answered Dr. _Slop_. --I maintain it, said my uncle _Toby_, it would have broke the cerebellum (unless indeed the skull had been as hard as a granado) and turn’d it all into a perfect posset. ------Pshaw! replied Dr. _Slop_, a child’s head is naturally as soft as the pap of an apple; --the sutures give way--and besides, I could have extracted by the feet after. --Not you, said she. ----I rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my father.

Pray do, added my uncle _Toby_.

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