At Harrow Weald it has always been my wife who for years has been a great sufferer and finds a really new-laid egg the one thing she can digest in the way of solid food.  So I turned her on as movingly as I could not long since, and was at last sold some eggs that were no better than common shop-eggs, if so good.  Next time I went I said my poor wife had been made seriously ill by them; it was no good trying to deceive her; she could tell a new-laid egg from a bad one as well as any woman in London, and she had such a high temper that it was very unpleasant for me when she found herself disappointed.

“Ah! sir,” said the landlady, “but you would not like to lose her.”

“Ma’am,” I replied, “I must not allow my thoughts to wander in that direction.  But it’s no use bringing her stale eggs, anyhow.”

SNAPSHOTTING A BISHOP
[Sidenote:  Samuel Butler]

I must some day write about how I hunted the late Bishop of Carlisle with my camera, hoping to shoot him when he was sea-sick crossing from Calais to Dover, and how St. Somebody protected him and said I might shoot him when he was well, but not when he was sea-sick.  I should like to do it in the manner of the “Odyssey”: 

...  And the steward went round and laid them all on the sofas and benches, and he set a beautiful basin by each, variegated and adorned with flowers; but it contained no water for washing the hands, and Neptune sent great waves that washed over the eyelet-holes of the cabin.  But when it was now the middle of the passage and a great roaring arose as of beasts in the Zoological Gardens, and they promised hecatombs to Neptune if he would still the raging of the waves....

At any rate I shot him and have him in my snap-shot book; but he was not sea-sick.

From the Note-Books of Samuel Butler.

GOETHE’S MOTHER
[Sidenote:  G.H.  Lewes]

That he was the loveliest baby ever seen, exciting admiration wherever nurse or mother carried him, and exhibiting, in swaddling clothes, the most wonderful intelligence, we need no biographer to tell us.  Is it not said of every baby?  But that he was in truth a wonderful child we have undeniable evidence, and of a kind less questionable than the statement of mothers and relatives.  At three years old he could seldom be brought to play with little children, and only on the condition of their being pretty.  One day, in a neighbour’s house, he suddenly began to cry and exclaim, “That black child must go away!  I can’t bear him!” And he howled till he was carried home, where he was slowly pacified; the whole cause of his grief being the ugliness of the child.

A quick, merry little girl grew up by the boy’s side.  Four other children also came, but soon vanished.  Cornelia was the only companion who survived, and for her his affection dated from the cradle.  He brought his toys to her, wanted to feed her and attend on her, and was very jealous of all who approached her.  “When she was taken from the cradle, over which he watched, his anger was scarcely to be quieted.  He was altogether much more easily moved to anger than to tears.”  To the last his love for Cornelia was passionate.