Chapter 3

ON the fifth day of _November_, 1718, which to the æra fixed on, was as
near nine kalendar months as any husband could in reason have
expected,—was I _Tristram Shandy_, Gentleman, brought forth into this
scurvy and disastrous world of ours.—I wish I had been born in the
Moon, or in any of the planets, (except _Jupiter_ or _Saturn_, because
I never could bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared worse
with me in any of them (though I will not answer for _Venus_) than it
has in this vile, dirty planet of ours,—which, o’ my conscience, with
reverence be it spoken, I take to be made up of the shreds and
clippings of the rest;——not but the planet is well enough, provided a
man could be born in it to a great title or to a great estate; or could
any how contrive to be called up to public charges, and employments of
dignity or power;——but that is not my case;——and therefore every man
will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it;———for which
cause I affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds that ever
was made;—for I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew my
breath in it, to this, that I can now scarce draw it at all, for an
asthma I got in scating against the wind in _Flanders;_—I have been the
continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though I will not
wrong her by saying, She has ever made me feel the weight of any great
or signal evil;——yet with all the good temper in the world I affirm it
of her, that in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner
where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious duchess has pelted me
with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever
small HERO sustained.

C H A P. VI

IN the beginning of the last chapter, I informed you exactly _when_ I
was born; but I did not inform you _how. No_, that particular was
reserved entirely for a chapter by itself;—besides, Sir, as you and I
are in a manner perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been
proper to have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself
all at once.

—You must have a little patience. I have undertaken, you see, to write
not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your
knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the
one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed
farther with me, the slight acquaintance, which is now beginning
betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that unless one of us is in
fault, will terminate in friendship.—_O diem praeclarum!_—then nothing
which has touched me will be thought trifling in its nature, or tedious
in its telling. Therefore, my dear friend and companion, if you should
think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out—bear
with me,—and let me go on, and tell my story my own way:—Or, if I
should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,—or should sometimes
put on a fool’s cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass
along,—don’t fly off,—but rather courteously give me credit for a
little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;—and as we jog on,
either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do any thing,—only keep
your temper.

C H A P. VII

IN the same village where my father and my mother dwelt, dwelt also a
thin, upright, motherly, notable, good old body of a midwife, who with
the help of a little plain good sense, and some years full employment
in her business, in which she had all along trusted little to her own
efforts, and a great deal to those of dame Nature,—had acquired, in her
way, no small degree of reputation in the world:—by which word _world_,
need I in this place inform your worship, that I would be understood to
mean no more of it, than a small circle described upon the circle of
the great world, of four _English_ miles diameter, or thereabouts, of
which the cottage where the good old woman lived is supposed to be the
centre?—She had been left it seems a widow in great distress, with
three or four small children, in her forty-seventh year; and as she was
at that time a person of decent carriage,—grave deportment,—a woman
moreover of few words and withal an object of compassion, whose
distress, and silence under it, called out the louder for a friendly
lift: the wife of the parson of the parish was touched with pity; and
having often lamented an inconvenience to which her husband’s flock had
for many years been exposed, inasmuch as there was no such thing as a
midwife, of any kind or degree, to be got at, let the case have been
never so urgent, within less than six or seven long miles riding; which
said seven long miles in dark nights and dismal roads, the country
thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, was almost equal to
fourteen; and that in effect was sometimes next to having no midwife at
all; it came into her head, that it would be doing as seasonable a
kindness to the whole parish, as to the poor creature herself, to get
her a little instructed in some of the plain principles of the
business, in order to set her up in it. As no woman thereabouts was
better qualified to execute the plan she had formed than herself, the
gentlewoman very charitably undertook it; and having great influence
over the female part of the parish, she found no difficulty in
effecting it to the utmost of her wishes. In truth, the parson join’d
his interest with his wife’s in the whole affair, and in order to do
things as they should be, and give the poor soul as good a title by law
to practise, as his wife had given by institution,—he cheerfully paid
the fees for the ordinary’s licence himself, amounting in the whole, to
the sum of eighteen shillings and four pence; so that betwixt them
both, the good woman was fully invested in the real and corporal
possession of her office, together with all its _rights, members, and
appurtenances whatsoever._