Explore "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" by Laurence Sterne on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the case of knots, -- by which, in the first place, I would not be understood to mean slipknots -- because in the course of my life and opinions -- my opinions concerning them will come in more properly when I mention the catastrophe of my great uncle Mr. Hammond Shandy, -- a little man, -- but of high fancy: -- he rushed into the duke of Monmouth's affair: -- -- -nor, secondly, in this place, do I mean that particular species of knots called bowknots; -- there is so little address, or skill, or patience required in the unloosing them, that they are below my giving any opinion at all about them.
-- But by the knots I am speaking of, may it please your reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, devilish tight, hard knots, made bona fide, as Obadiah made his; -- -- -in which there is no quibbling provision made by the duplication and return of the two ends of the strings thro' the annulus or noose made by the second implication of them -- to get them slipp'd and undone by.