They set out to build a new bridge but can't decide on the proper model — for current military and political reasons. Toby thinks that one type with a lead weight in "eternal ballance" may be just the thing, but it is "cycloid" in shape, and he doesn't know enough about cycloids. So "the bridge went not forwards. — We'll ask somebody about it, cried my uncle Toby to Trim."
When Trim announced that Dr. Slop was making a bridge, Walter is about to begin teasing and baiting them again. "Trim's answer, in an instant, tore the laurel from his brows, and twisted it to pieces": "'Tis a bridge for master's nose. — In bringing him into the world with his vile instruments, he has crush'd his nose . . . as flat as a pancake to his face." " — Lead me, brother Toby, cried my father, to my room this instant."
Tristram feels melancholy about his father's misery, and it makes his writing more sober and serious. "A tide of little evils and distresses has been setting in against" his father, and "now is the storm thicken'd, and going to break, and pour down full upon his head."
Man bears pain and sorrow "(and, for aught I know, pleasure too)" best in a horizontal position, and Walter throws himself face down across his bed. His posture is in every detail that of a man "borne down with sorrows"; the knuckles of his left hand are "reclining upon the handle of the chamber pot." Toby sits quietly in a chair at the opposite side of the bed.
Although any man would be distressed at "the breaking down of the bridge of a child's nose, by the edge of a pair of forceps," Tristram must explain why his father was so extravagant in his grief. To do so, "I must leave him upon the bed for half an hour, — and my good uncle Toby . . . beside him."
