Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 3).pdf/160

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having the whole honour of this, as it had of almost all his other strange notions.—For in a great measure he might be said to have suck'd this in, with his mother's milk. He did his part however.—If education planted the mistake, (in case it was one) my father watered it, and ripened it to perfection.

He would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon the subject, that he did not conceive how the greatest family in England could stand it out against an uninterrupted succession of six or seven short noses.—And for the contrary reason, he would generally add, That it must be one of the greatest problems in civil life, where the same number of long and jolly noses following one another in a direct line, did not raise and hoist itup