--No doubt, Sir,--there is a whole chapter wanting here--and a chasm of ten pages made in the book by it--but the book-binder is neither a fool, or a knave, or a puppy--nor is the book a jot more imperfect (at least upon that score)--but, on the contrary, the book is more perfect and complete by wanting the chapter, than having it, as I shall demonstrate to your reverences in this manner.--I question first, by-the-bye, whether the same experiment might not be made as successfully upon sundry other chapters--but there is no end, an' please your reverences, in trying experiments upon chapters--we have had enough of it--So there's an end of that matter.
But before I begin my demonstration, let me only tell you, that the chapter which I have torn out, and which otherwise you would all have been reading just now, instead of this--was the description of my father's, my uncle Toby's, Trim's, and Obadiah's setting out and journeying to the visitation at. . ..
We'll go in the coach, said my father--Prithee, have the arms been altered, Obadiah?--It would have made my story much better to have begun with telling you, that at the time my mother's arms were added to the Shandy's, when the coach was re-painted upon my father's marriage, it had so fallen out that the coach-painter, whether by performing all his works with the left hand, like Turpilius the Roman, or Hans Holbein of Basil--or whether 'twas more from the blunder of his head than hand--or whether, lastly, it was from the sinister turn which every thing relating to our family was apt to take--it so fell out, however, to our reproach, that instead of the bend-dexter, which since Harry the Eighth's reign was honestly our due--a bend-sinister, by some of these fatalities, had been drawn quite across the field of the Shandy arms. 'Tis scarce credible that the mind of so wise a man as my father was, could be so much incommoded with so small a matter.
The word coach--let it be whose it would--or coach-man, or coach-horse, or coach-hire, could never be named in the family, but he constantly complained of carrying this vile mark of illegitimacy upon the door of his own; he never once was able to step into the coach, or out of it, without turning round to take a view of the arms, and making a vow at the same time, that it was the last time he would ever set his foot in it again, till the bend-sinister was taken out--but like the affair of the hinge, it was one of the many things which the Destinies had set down in their books ever to be grumbled at (and in wiser families than ours)--but never to be mended.
