As Mrs. Shandy begins to go into labor, Walter and Uncle Toby are sitting in the parlor. Walter wonders what all the noise is upstairs, and Uncle Toby says "I think — ." Tristram interrupts to say that before he can let him finish his sentence, it is appropriate to outline Uncle Toby's character. Writing on "this very rainy day, March 26, 1759, and betwixt the hours of nine and ten in the morning," he recalls that none of the Shandy females had any character except his great-aunt Dinah. Then Uncle Toby's character-drawing goes on. Toby was a most virtuous, extremely modest man; he acquired his modesty from "a blow from a stone . . . at the siege of Namur, which struck full" upon his groin — a long and interesting story. "'Tis for an episode hereafter." In the interim, suffice it to say that whenever Walter told the story of their Aunt Dinah, who "was married and got with child by the coachman," Toby's sense of modesty was outraged. Walter persisted in expounding his theory of their family: "What is the character of a family to an hypothesis?" he would say, and because it was useless to argue with him, Toby would whistle "Lillabullero," a favorite song. After outlining the classical types of argument, Tristram suggests that this kind of argument be named the "Argumentum Fistulatorium" — argument by whistling.
Tristram discusses his digressions, noting that in his latest one, "there is a masterstroke of digressive skill": as he was about to tell of Toby's character, he thought of his Aunt Dinah and the coachman, but the reader will "perceive that the drawing of my uncle Toby's character went on gently all the time . . . so that you are much better acquainted" with him now. Thus, he concludes, "my work is digressive, and it is progressive too, — and at the same time."
