The midwife, having slipped and hurt her hip, sends for Dr. Slop. He tells Uncle Toby that by means of "******," everything will turn out all right for the Shandy family.
Tristram praises Dr. Slop's "******" — actually, a pause — pointing out that when you have the thing about you, it is more effective to produce it than to name it. Dr. Slop is searching around in his bag for it, and when he pulls out the forceps, the forceps pull out a syringe. Uncle Toby takes his advantage and says, "Good God! . . . are children brought into the world with a squirt?"
In a demonstration of the forceps, Uncle Toby's hands are skinned, and "you have crush'd all my knuckles . . . to a jelly." Walter wishes that Dr. Slop would extract the child by his feet rather than by his head. Discussion follows between Dr. Slop and the midwife about which part of the foetus is showing, his hip or his head. Walter and Dr. Slop talk about the dangers to both parts from the forceps; "When your possibility has taken place at the hip, — you may as well take off the head too," Walter says glumly.
Time has passed and Walter and Toby are sitting in the parlor alone. Walter is about to lecture on Duration when Toby takes the wind out of his sails by giving the exact answer to Walter's rhetorical question. To Walter's chagrin, Toby doesn't understand it at all, and he isn't interested in understanding it. Conversation ceases.
Tristram feels that the loss of Walter's conjecture about time and eternity is a great one: "by the ashes of my dear Rabelais, and dearer Cervantes," it was a "discourse devoutly to be wished for!"
Walter and Toby, gazing at the fire, fall asleep. Everyone is accounted for, sleeping or busy elsewhere. Tristram now has a moment to spare, and he writes his Preface. The Preface, lengthy and full of Shandean extravagance, deals chiefly with Locke's Wit and Judgment; like the knobs on the back of his chair, they go together. Locke — and anyone else who shares his view — was wrong to think that the one (Judgment) was more important than the other.
