Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 4).pdf/31

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

[23]

scouring, I was quilting—God help me! I never saw it—I never touch'd it!—would I had been a centinel, a bandy-leg'd drummer, a trumpeter, a trumpeter's wife, was the general cry and lamentation in every street and corner of Strasburg.

Whilst all this confusion and disorder triumphed throughout the great city of Strasburg, was the courteous stranger going on as gently upon his mule in his way to Frankfort, as if he had had no concern at all in the affair—talking all the way he rode in broken sentences, sometimes to his mule—sometimes to himself—sometimes to his Julia.

O Julia, my lovely Julia!—nay I cannot stop to let thee bite that thistle—that ever the suspected tongue of a rival should haverobbed