William Gordon Stables

"In general appearance the is an extremely large and powerful fellow, with a beautiful head and speaking countenance, in which sagacity is blended with nobility, and a body of great symmetry, combining, one might say, the agility of the with the strength of the ."

"Very few of the old s interfere with the duties of their assistants, but there be men who seem to think you have merely come to the service to learn, not to practise your profession, and therefore they treat as mere students, or at the best hobble-de-hoy doctors. Of this class was Dr. Gruff, a man whom I would back against the whole profession for , , , or ; but who, I rather suspect, never prescribed a dose of , , or in his life."

"Three days at , and up anchor again; our next place of call being . Every one has heard of the , who tried to beat the British but didn't, ... was caught and chained ... to a rock somewhere in the middle of the sea ... The rock was St. Helena, and a very beautiful rock it is too, hill and and thriving town, its mountain sides tilled and its s and s containing many a fertile little farm. It is the duty of every one who touches the shores of this far-famed island to make a pilgrimage to .... both sides of the road all the way to the tomb are strewn with , empty of course, and at the grave itself there are s of them; and the same is the case at every place which has visit4ed, or where English foot has ever trod."

"When I was a little boy at school, floundering through Herodotus, and getting double doses of fum-fum daily for my Anabasis—for my old teacher, when he couldn't get enough Greek into one end of me, took jolly good care to put it in at the other—there was no man I had greater respect for than Alexander the Great, owing to his having done that business so neatly. I practiised afterwards on the dominie's tawse (i.e., the fum-fum strap); I tied a splendid knot on it, and then cut it through with a jackknife; but woe's me! the plaguy dominie caught me in the very act, and—and I had to take my meals standing for a week."

"Every child knows how fond cats are of hunting and catching mice, but no cat any respectability would think of confining her attention to mice alone. The very presence of a cat about a house will usually suffice to keep these destructive pests at bay; and if one should pop out of its hole, it knows, or ought to know, what to expect."

"I have dozens of well-authenticated anecdotes of cats who are very expert at fishing. I have, myself, watched a cat by the banks of a stream, until I have seen him dive into the the water, and emerge almost immediately with a large in his mouth. Cats who fish, generally belong to s, or are bred and reared somewhere near a river. They not only catch fish of all sorts, but even s; often springing many feet off the bank after prey of this kind, and even diving under to secure it. In Scotland cats often attack and destroy large quantities of salmon in small streams, in the spawning season."