The breakfast-eating practical joker, who can be credited with the
humorous invention of placing the shell of an egg (the edible contents
of which he has previously extracted and swallowed) inverted in an
egg-cup, so as to deceive the first hungry person arriving late into
fancying that the others have considerately deprived themselves
in order that he may not be without his favourite delicacy, this
originator, I say, was decidedly a genius. His work after hundreds,
nay, thousands of years, remains, fresh as is the new laid egg itself!
After being used a million billion times, it gives now the same
pleasure as ever it did when it first issued from the brain of its
brilliant creator! Such a practical joke as this is "not for an age,
but for all time," until there shall be no longer left a hen to lay an
egg, or, if there be an egg left by the expiring hen, there shall be
no longer a person remaining to eat the egg left by the egg-spiring
hen; or, if the person and the egg be there, the last man and the last
egg, there shall be no ten minutes allowed for refreshment, as there
will be no more time for anything!! SOCRATES, HOMER, OVID, HORACE,
PLAUTUS, TERENCE, SHAKSPEARE, WATT, Sir ISAAC NEWTON, _cum multis
aliis_! their names are remembered, and their fame is to the end of
the world! While, alas, the name of the True Wit who first chuckled
over his stroke of genius, is lost for ever, no work of art
perpetuates his name. But his humour is _usque ad finem omnium rerum_!
* * * * *
MRS. R. is not surprised that the _Valkyrie_ did not win, when it
broke its pinnacle and did not have a centipede.
* * * * *