My father at that time was just beginning business in London, and had taken a house, and as the truest friendship and cordiality subsisted between the two brothers, and as my father thought my Uncle Toby could nowhere be so well nursed and taken care of as in his own house, he assigned him the very best apartment in it.  And what was a much more sincere mark of his affection still, he would never suffer a friend or acquaintance to step into the house, but he would take him by the hand, and lead him upstairs to see his brother Toby, and chat an hour by his bedside.

The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it—­my uncle’s visitors at least thought so, and they would frequently turn the discourse to that subject, and from that subject the discourse would generally roll on to the siege itself.

IV

When my Uncle Toby got his map of Namur to his mind he began immediately to apply himself, and with the utmost diligence, to the study of it.  The more my Uncle Toby pored over the map, the more he took a liking to it.

In the latter end of the third year my Uncle began to break in upon daily regularity of a clean shirt, and to allow his surgeon scarce time sufficient to dress his wound, concerning himself so little about it as not to ask him once in seven times dressing how it went on, when, lo! all of a sudden—­for the change was as quick as lightning—­he began to sigh heavily for his recovery, complained to my father, grew impatient with the surgeon; and one morning, as he heard his foot coming upstairs, he shut up his books and thrust aside his instruments, in order to expostulate with him upon the protraction of his cure, which he told him might surely have been accomplished at least by that time.

Desire of life and health is implanted in man’s nature; the love of liberty and enlargement is a sister-passion to it.  These my Uncle Toby had in common with his species.  But nothing wrought with our family after the common way.

V

When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion, or, in other words, when his hobbyhorse grows headstrong, farewell cool reason and fair discretion.  My Uncle Toby’s wound was near well; he broiled with impatience to put his design in execution; and so, without consulting further, with any soul living, which, by the way, I think is right, when you are predetermined to take no one soul’s advice, he privately ordered Trim, his man, to pack up a bundle of lint and dressings, and hire a chariot and four to be at the door exactly by twelve o’clock that day, when he knew my father would be upon change.  So, leaving a banknote upon the table for the surgeon’s care of him, and a letter of tender thanks for his brother’s, he packed up his maps, his books of fortification, his instruments, and so forth, and by the help of a crutch on one side and Trim on the other, my Uncle Toby embarked for Shandy Hall.

The reason, or rather the rise, of this sudden demigration was as follows: