The Bed-Book of Happiness | Page 9

animal that refuses to let
another eat it has the courage of its convictions, and, if it gets eaten,
dies a martyr to them....
It is good for the man that he should not be thwarted--that he should
have his own way as far, and with as little difficulty, as possible.
Cooking is good because it makes matters easier by unsettling the
meat's mind and preparing it for new ideas. All food must first be
prepared for us by animals and plants, or we cannot assimilate it; and
so thoughts are more easily assimilated that have been already digested
by other minds. A man should avoid converse with things that have
been stunted or starved, and should not eat such meat as has been
overdriven or underfed or afflicted with disease, nor should he touch
fruit or vegetables that have not been well grown.
Sitting quiet after eating is akin to sitting still during divine service so
as not to disturb the congregation. We are catechising and converting
our proselytes, and there should be no row. As we get older we must
digest more quietly still; our appetite is less, our gastric juices are no
longer so eloquent, they have lost that cogent fluency which carried
away all that came in contact with it. They have become sluggish and
unconciliatory. This is what happens to any man when he suffers from
an attack of indigestion.
Or, indeed, any other sickness, is the inarticulate expression of the pain
we feel on seeing a proselyte escape us just as we were on the point of
converting it.
ASSIMILATION AND PERSECUTION [Sidenote: _Samuel Butler_]
We cannot get rid of persecution; if we feel at all we must persecute

something; the mere acts of feeding and 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
community of nutriment, which is but a thinly veiled travesty of
descent? When she eats peas with her knife, he does so too; there is not
a bit of bread and butter she puts into her mouth, nor a lump of sugar
she drops into her tea, but he knoweth it altogether, though he knows
nothing whatever about it. She is en-Croesused and he
en-scullery-maided so long as she remains linked to him by the golden
chain which passes from