long since settled in my mind, an
excellent subject--a most telling, lively, and popular subject--I go to
breakfast determined to finish that meal in 9 3/4 minutes, as usual, and
then retire to my desk and work, when--oh, provoking!--here in the paper
is the very subject treated, on which I was going to write! Yesterday
another paper which I saw treated it--and of course, as I need not tell
you, spoiled it. Last Saturday, another paper had an article on the
subject; perhaps you may guess what it was--but I won't tell you. Only
this is true, my favorite subject, which was about to make the best
paper we have had for a long time: my bird, my game that I was going to
shoot and serve up with such a delicate sauce, has been found by other
sportsmen; and pop, pop, pop, a half-dozen of guns have banged at it,
mangled it, and brought it down.

"And can't you take some other text?" say you. All this is mighty well.
But if you have set your heart on a certain dish for dinner, be it cold
boiled veal, or what you will, and they bring you turtle and venison,
don't you feel disappointed? During your walk you have been making up
your mind that that cold meat, with moderation and a pickle, will be
a very sufficient dinner: you have accustomed your thoughts to it; and
here, in place of it, is a turkey, surrounded by coarse sausages, or a
reeking pigeon-pie or a fulsome roast-pig. I have known many a good and
kind man made furiously angry by such a contretemps. I have known him
lose his temper, call his wife and servants names, and a whole household
made miserable. If, then, as is notoriously the case, it is too
dangerous to balk a man about his dinner, how much more about his
article? I came to my meal with an ogre-like appetite and gusto. Fee,
faw, fum! Wife, where is that tender little Princekin? Have you trussed
him, and did you stuff him nicely, and have you taken care to baste him
and do him, not too brown, as I told you? Quick! I am hungry! I begin
to whet my knife, to roll my eyes about, and roar and clap my huge chest
like a gorilla; and then my poor Ogrina has to tell me that the little
princes have all run away, whilst she was in the kitchen, making the
paste to bake them in! I pause in the description. I won't condescend to
report the bad language, which you know must ensue, when an ogre,
whose mind is ill regulated, and whose habits of self-indulgence
are notorious, finds himself disappointed of his greedy hopes. What
treatm