The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

-- -- And the story too -- if you please: for though I have all along been hastening towards this part of it, with so much earnest desire, as well knowing it to be the choicest morsel of what I had to offer to the world, yet now that I am got to it, anyone is welcome to take my pen, and go on with the story for me that will -- I see the difficulties of the descriptions I'm going to give -- and feel my want of powers.

It is one comfort at least to me, that I lost some fourscore ounces of blood this week in a most uncritical fever which attacked me at the beginning of this chapter; so that I have still some hopes remaining, it may be more in the serous or globular parts of the blood, than in the subtle aura of the brain -- -- -be it which it will -- an Invocation can do no hurt -- -- -and I leave the affair entirely to the invoked, to inspire or to inject me according as he sees good.