Explore "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" by Laurence Sterne on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There was not any one scene more entertaining in our family -- and to do it justice in this point; -- -- -and I here put off my cap and lay it upon the table close beside my ink-horn, on purpose to make my declaration to the world concerning this one article the more solemn -- -- -that I believe in my soul (unless my love and partiality to my understanding blinds me) the hand of the supreme Maker and first Designer of all things never made or put a family together (in that period at least of it which I have sat down to write the story of) -- -- -where the characters of it were cast or contrasted with so dramatick a felicity as ours was, for this end; or in which the capacities of affording such exquisite scenes, and the powers of shifting them perpetually from morning to night, were lodged and entrusted with so unlimited a confidence, as in the Shandy Family.
Not any one of these was more diverting, I say, in this whimsical theatre of ours -- -- -than what frequently arose out of this selfsame chapter of long noses -- -- -- especially when my father's imagination was heated with the enquiry, and nothing would serve him but to heat my uncle Toby's too.