Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 1).pdf/103

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

[99]

gan to cast her eyes upon the midwife, whom you have so often heard me mention; and before the week was well got round, as the famous Dr. Maningham was not to be had, she had come to a final determination in her mind,—notwithstanding there was a scientifick operator within so near a call as eight miles of us, and who, moreover, had expressly wrote a five shillings book upon the subject of midwifery, in which he had exposed, not only the blunders of the sisterhood itself,—but had likewise superadded many curious improvements for the quicker extraction of the fœtus in cross births, and some other cases of danger which belay us in getting into the world; notwithstanding all this, my mother, I say, was absolutely determined to trust her life and mine with it, into no soul's hand but this old woman's only.—Now this Ilike;