equally in the balance before him, that they were absolutely indifferent to
him. Jack, Dick, and Tom were of this class: These my father called
neutral names;--affirming of them, without a satire, That there had been as
many knaves and fools, at least, as wise and good men, since the world
began, who had indifferently borne them;--so that, like equal forces acting
against each other in contrary directions, he thought they mutually
destroyed each other's effects; for which reason, he would often declare,
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
natura, but what was extremely mean and pitiful: So that in the midst of a
dispute on the subject, in which, by the bye, he was frequently involved,--
he would sometimes break off in a sudden and spirited Epiphonema, or rather
Erotesis, raised a third, and sometimes a full fifth above the key of the
discourse,--and demand it categorically of his antagonist, Whether he would
take upon him to say, he had ever remembered,--whether he had ever read,--
or even whether he had ever heard tell of a man, called Tristram,
performing any thing great or worth recording?--No,--he would say,--
Tristram!--The thing is impossible.

What could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a book to publish this
notion of his to the world? Little boots it to the subtle speculatist to