The Mister loved to be teased. He frequently asked for it by lying down and fanning the floor with his tail whilst eyeing you invitingly. We used to tease him about his black nose: called him nigger nose.

Living in rooms opposite these slave girls, and seeing them at all hours of the day and night, I had frequent opportunities of studying them. They were average specimens of the steatopygous Abyssinian breed, broad-shouldered, thin-flanked, fine-limbed, and with haunches of prodigious size.

...that recipient of the favors and caresses of the hearthstone, that lapper of milk from the national saucer, the cat.

In his own grounds he never wore a hat: he used to say, that on his first visit to Paris he was ashamed of his effeminacy, when he saw every meagre little Frenchman whom he could have knocked down in a breath walking without a hat, which he could not do without a certainty of taking the disease which the Germans say is endemical in England, and which they call to catch cold.