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.
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