Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 3).pdf/101

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Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more luxuriant island, where you perceive the spring tide of our blood and humours runs high,—where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy, and lechery, and other whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and subject to reason,—the height of our wit and the depth of our judgment, you see, are exactly proportioned to the length and breadth of our necessities,—and accordingly, we have them sent down amongst us in such a flowing kind of decent and creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to complain.

It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot and cold,—wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and settled way;—so that sometimes for near half acentury