TO my uncle Mr. _Toby Shandy_ do I stand indebted for the preceding
anecdote, to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher,
and much given to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft,
and heavily complained of the injury; but once more particularly, as my
uncle _Toby_ well remember’d, upon his observing a most unaccountable
obliquity, (as he call’d it) in my manner of setting up my top, and
justifying the principles upon which I had done it,—the old gentleman
shook his head, and in a tone more expressive by half of sorrow than
reproach,—he said his heart all along foreboded, and he saw it verified
in this, and from a thousand other observations he had made upon me,
That I should neither think nor act like any other man’s child:—_But
alas!_ continued he, shaking his head a second time, and wiping away a
tear which was trickling down his cheeks, _My Tristram’s misfortunes
began nine months before ever he came into the world._

—My mother, who was sitting by, look’d up, but she knew no more than
her backside what my father meant,—but my uncle, Mr. _Toby Shandy_, who
had been often informed of the affair,—understood him very well.

C H A P. IV

I KNOW there are readers in the world, as well as many other good
people in it, who are no readers at all,—who find themselves ill at
ease, unless they are let into the whole secret from first to last, of
every thing which concerns you.

It is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and from a
backwardness in my nature to disappoint any one soul living, that I
have been so very particular already. As my life and opinions are
likely to make some noise in the world, and, if I conjecture right,
will take in all ranks, professions, and denominations of men
whatever,—be no less read than the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ itself—and in
the end, prove the very thing which _Montaigne_ dreaded his Essays
should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-window;—I find it
necessary to consult every one a little in his turn; and therefore must
beg pardon for going on a little farther in the same way: For which
cause, right glad I am, that I have begun the history of myself in the
way I have done; and that I am able to go on, tracing every thing in
it, as _Horace_ says, _ab Ovo._

_Horace_, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether: But that
gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy;—(I forget
which,) besides, if it was not so, I should beg Mr. _Horace’s_
pardon;—for in writing what I have set about, I shall confine myself
neither to his rules, nor to any man’s rules that ever lived.

To such however as do not choose to go so far back into these things, I
can give no better advice than that they skip over the remaining part
of this chapter; for I declare before-hand, ’tis wrote only for the
curious and inquisitive.

——————Shut the door.—————— I was begot in the night betwixt the first
_Sunday_ and the first _Monday_ in the month of _March_, in the year of
our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighteen. I am positive I
was.—But how I came to be so very particular in my account of a thing
which happened before I was born, is owing to another small anecdote
known only in our own family, but now made publick for the better
clearing up this point.

My father, you must know, who was originally a _Turkey_ merchant, but
had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die
upon, his paternal estate in the county of ——, was, I believe, one of
the most regular men in every thing he did, whether ’twas matter of
business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen
of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he
had made it a rule for many years of his life,—on the first
_Sunday-night_ of every month throughout the whole year,—as certain as
ever the _Sunday-night_ came,—to wind up a large house-clock, which we
had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands:—And being
somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been
speaking of,—he had likewise gradually brought some other little family
concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my
uncle _Toby_, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no
more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.

It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure,
fell upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me
to my grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which
have no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor
mother could never hear the said clock wound up,——but the thoughts of
some other things unavoidably popped into her head—_& vice
versa:_——Which strange combination of ideas, the sagacious _Locke_, who
certainly understood the nature of these things better than most men,
affirms to have produced more wry actions than all other sources of
prejudice whatsoever.

But this by the bye.

Now it appears by a memorandum in my father’s pocket-book, which now
lies upon the table, “That on _Lady-day_, which was on the 25th of the
same month in which I date my geniture,——my father set upon his journey
to _London_, with my eldest brother _Bobby_, to fix him at
_Westminster_ school;” and, as it appears from the same authority,
“That he did not get down to his wife and family till the _second week_
in _May_ following,”—it brings the thing almost to a certainty.
However, what follows in the beginning of the next chapter, puts it
beyond all possibility of a doubt.

———But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all _December, January_,
and _February?_——Why, Madam,—he was all that time afflicted with a
Sciatica.

C H A P. V