Max Beerbohm

“ I do not exactly know why I always dine with Simpson on Christmas Day. Neither of us likes the other. He thinks me a dreamer, and for some reason I never trust him, though he is undoubtedly the most brilliant Pantaeschrologist of his day, and we had been contemporaries at the F.R.Z.S. It is possible that he dislikes me, and I him, less than does anybody else. ”

“ It has been under treatment in my laboratory for the last ten years."
"Ten years," I muttered. "Ten ... seems almost impossible."
"For ten years," he resumed, "I have been testing, acidizing ... thing began to decompose under my very ... at length ... brown, pulpy substance, such as you might ... sultanas ... Now comes in the curious part of the..."
How long after I don't know, I was awoken by a vicious kick from Simpson's club-foot.
"You brute!" I cried, "you drugged that sherry!"
"Faugh!" he sneered, "you say that every year!" ”