Tristram Shandy C H A P. XVII

——’TWAS nothing,—I did not lose two drops of blood by it——’twas not worth calling in a surgeon, had he lived next door to us——thousands suffer by choice, what I did by accident.——Doctor Slop made ten times more of it, than there was occasion:——some men rise, by the art of hanging great weights upon small wires,—and I am this day (August the 10th, 1761) paying part of the price of this man’s reputation.——O ’twould provoke a stone, to see how things are carried on in this world!——The chamber-maid had left no ******* *** under the bed:——Cannot you contrive, master, quoth Susannah, lifting up the sash with one hand, as she spoke, and helping me up into the window-seat with the other,—cannot you manage, my dear, for a single time, to **** *** ** *** ****** ?

I was five years old.——Susannah did not consider that nothing was well hung in our family,——so slap came the sash down like lightning upon us;—Nothing is left,—cried Susannah,—nothing is left—for me, but to run my country.——

My uncle Toby’s house was a much kinder sanctuary; and so Susannah fled to it.