"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._