Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 1).pdf/129

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He would not give a cherry-stone to choose amongst them. Bob, which was my brother's name, was another of these neutral kinds of Christian names, which operated very little either way; and as my father happen'd to be at Epsom, when it was given him,—he would oft times thank heaven it was no worse. Andrew was something like a negative quantity in Algebra with him;—'twas worse, he said, than nothing.—William stood pretty high:—Numps again was low with him:—and Nick, he said, was the Devil.

But, of all names in the universe, he had the most unconquerable aversion for Tristram;—he had the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it of any thing in the world,—thinking it could possibly produce nothing in rerum naturâ, but what was extreamly mean and piti-ful: