_ Looking through the parish
register, at the request of a labourer who wished to ascertain his
age, the parson finds express words of bequest leaving the watch-coat
"for the sole use of the sextons of the church for ever, to be worn by
them respectively on winterly cold nights," and at the moment when he
is exclaiming, "Just Heaven! what an escape have I had! Give this
for a petticoat to Trim's wife!" he is interrupted by Trim himself
entering the vestry with "the coat actually ript and cut out" ready
for conversion into a petticoat for his wife. And we get a foretaste
of the familiar Shandian impertinence in the remark which follows,
that "there are many good similes subsisting in the world, but which I
have neither time to recollect nor look for," which would give you an
idea of the parson's astonishment at Trim's impudence. The emoluments
of "Pickering and Pocklington" appear under the figure of a "pair of
black velvet plush breeches" which ultimately "got into the possession
of one Lorry Slim (Sterne himself, of course), an unlucky wight, by
whom they are still worn: in truth, as you will guess, they are very
thin by this time.
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