[O]f all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best… - Laurence Sterne

I begin with writing the first
sentence — and trusting to Almighty
God for the second.

When issues of events like these my father is waiting for, are hanging in the scales of fate, the mind has the advantage of changing the principle of expectation three times, without which it would not have power to see it out. Curiosity governs the first moment; and the second moment is all economy to justify the expense of the first — and for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth moments, and so on to the day of judgment — 'tis a point of HONOUR. I need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this all to Patience; but that VIRTUE, methinks, has extent of domination sufficient of her own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few dismantled castles which HONOUR has left him upon the earth.

Now or never was the time.

God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb.