The Adventures of Roderick Random

Demolition of Tutor’s Teeth

Cornered by the tutor and his hounds in a farmer’s house where the narrator had sought shelter, he took aim with a large pebble. His marksmanship struck out four of the tutor’s foreteeth, incapacitating him from performing parish clerk duties and providing vengeance for years of persecution.

第三章

The chapter recounts the arrival of the narrator’s maternal uncle, Lieutenant Tom Bowling, a weathered seaman of strong constitution who supplies his nephew with necessities and determines to persuade the grandfather to make provision for him. The pair set out for the judge’s house but are set upon by the family dogs, Jowler and Caesar, whom the lieutenant slays in furious combat before confronting the young squire and demanding entry. Once admitted, Uncle Tom advocates passionately for the neglected Roderick, contrasting his kin with the favored “fair-weather Jack” among the cousins, while the female relatives excoriate him as a saucy tarpaulin. The judge receives them with cold civility and offers only to apprentice the boy to a tradesman, a proposal the lieutenant indignantly refuses before departing with the narrator back to the village, his curses echoing against the old shark and the young fry that surrounded him.

The Uncle’s Arrival

About this time my mother’s only brother, a lieutenant of a man-of-war who had been long abroad, arrived in his own country. Informed of the narrator’s condition, he came to visit and supplied him with necessaries. The uncle resolved not to leave until he had prevailed upon the grandfather to settle something handsome for the narrator’s future. However, this task proved difficult, as the uncle was entirely ignorant of the judge’s disposition and the ways of men in general, his education having been entirely at sea.