The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

C H a P. XIV

——THEY are Socrates’s children, said my uncle Toby. He has been dead a hundred years ago, replied my mother.

My uncle Toby was no chronologer—so not caring to advance one step but upon safe ground, he laid down his pipe deliberately upon the table, and rising up, and taking my mother most kindly by the hand, without saying another word, either good or bad, to her, he led her out after my father, that he might finish the ecclaircissement himself.