d growing are acts of persecution.
Our aim should be to persecute nothing but such things as are absolutely
incapable of resisting us. Man is the only animal that can remain on
friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

NIGHT-SHIRTS AND BABIES
[Sidenote: _Samuel Butler_]

On Hindhead, last Easter, we saw a family wash hung out to dry. There
were papa's two great night-shirts and mamma's two lesser night-gowns,
and then the children's smaller articles of clothing and mamma's drawers
and the girls' drawers, all full swollen with a strong north-east wind.
But mamma's night-gown was not so well pinned on, and, instead of being
full of steady wind like the others, kept blowing up and down as though
she were preaching wildly. We stood and laughed for ten minutes. The
housewife came to the window and wondered at us, but we could not
resist the pleasure of watching the absurdly life-like gestures which
the night-gowns made. I should like a _Santa Famiglia_ with clothes
drying in the background.

A love-story might be told in a series of sketches of the clothes of two
families hanging out to dry in adjacent gardens. Then a gentleman's
night-shirt from one garden and a lady's night-gown from the other
should be shown hanging in a third garden by themselves. By and by there
should be added a little night-shirt.

A philosopher might be tempted, on seeing the little night-shirt, to
suppose that the big night-shirts had made it. What we do is much the
same, for the body of a baby is not much more made by the two old
babies, after whose pattern it has cut itself out, than the little
night-shirt is made by the big ones. The thing that makes either the
little night-shirt or the little baby is something about which we know
nothing whatever at all.

DOES MAMMA KNOW?
[Sidenote: _Samuel Butler_]

A father was telling his eldest daughter, aged about six, that she had a
little sister, and was explaining to her how nice it all was. The child
said it was delightful, and added:

"Does mamma know? Let's go and tell her."

CROESUS AND HIS KITCHEN-MAID
[Sidenote: _Samuel Butler_]

I want people to see either their cells as less parts of themselves than
they do, or their servants as more.

Croesus's kitchen-maid is part of him, bone of his bone and flesh of his
flesh, for she eats what comes from his table, and, being fed of one
flesh, are they not brother and sister to one another in virtue of
commun