throughout the whole year,--as certain as ever the Sunday-night came,--to
wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing on the back-stairs head,
with his own hands:--And being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of
age at the time I have been speaking of,--he had likewise gradually brought
some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he
would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one
time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.

It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell
upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me to my
grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which have no
connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could
never hear the said clock wound up,--but the thoughts of some other things
unavoidably popped into her head--& vice versa:--Which strange combination
of ideas, the sagacious Locke, who certainly understood the nature of these
things better than most men, affirms to have produced more wry actions than
all other sources of prejudice whatsoever.

But this by the bye.

Now it appears by a memorandum in my father's pocket-book, which now lies
upon the table, 'That on Lady-day, which was on the 25th of the same month
in which I date my geniture,--my father set upon his journey to London,
with my eldest brother Bobby, to fix him at Westminster school;' and, as it
appears from the same authority, 'That he did not get down to his wife and
family till the second week in May following,'--it brings the thing almost
to a certainty. However, what follows in the beginning of the next
chapter, puts it beyond all possibility of a doubt.

--But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all December, January, and