Page:The Garden of Romance - 1897.djvu/138

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126
THE GARDEN OF ROMANCE

occasion of unlacing himself with a few more frolicksome strokes at vice than the straitness of the pulpit allowed. These, though, hussar-like, they skirmish lightly, and out of all order, are still auxiliaries on the side of Virtue. Tell me then, Mynheer Vander Blonederdondergewdenstronke, why they should not be printed together?

When my uncle Toby had turned everything into money, and settled all accounts betwixt the agent of the regiment and Le Fevre, and betwixt Le Fevre and all mankind, there remained nothing more in my uncle Toby's hands than an old regimental coat and sword; so that my uncle Toby found little or no opposition from the world in taking administration. The coat, my uncle Toby gave the Corporal. "Wear it, Trim," said my uncle Toby, "as long as it will hold together, for the sake of the poor Lieutenant. And this," said my uncle Toby, taking up the sword in his hand, and drawing it out of the scabbard as he spoke, "and this, Le Fevre, I'll save for thee; 'tis all the fortune," continued my uncle Toby, hanging it up upon a crook, and pointing to it, "'tis all the fortune, my dear Le Fevre, which God has left thee; but if He has given thee a heart to fight thy way with it in the world, and thou dost it like a man of honour, 'tis enough for us."

As soon as my uncle Toby had laid a foundation, and taught him to inscribe a regular polygon in a circle, he sent him to a public school, where, excepting Whitsuntide and Christmas, at which times the Corporal was punctually despatched for him, he remained to the spring of the year Seventeen; when the stories of the Emperor's sending his army into Hungary against the Turks, kind-