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Observer, Volume 1, Issue 7, 30 October 1880, Page 52

He was sitting in a local restaurant, enjoying an appetising dish of French prunes, by way of dessert, and discussing at the same time the peculiar merits or George Eliot's novels with a friend. His mind was too deeply abstracted upon his subject to permit of any scrutiny of the spoonfuls of fruity liquid which ever and anon he conveyed to his lips and daintily swallowed, it was in the midst of an elaborate disquisition upon the metaphysical character of some passages in " Daniel Deroncla " that he felt something flip from his mouth and lower itself dexterously from his chin on to his beard. Thinking to himself that it must be a slippery prune stone, he continued his remarks as he cautiously felt around for the supposed vegetable product. Even uoav he remembers that the people at the opposite table were convulsed with most immoderate laughter, and that his studied frowns upon them only provoked fresh bursts of merriment. As he carefully pursued his search for the vagrant stone, suddenly his fingers touched and closed upon a moist and scaly body, which writhed and wriggled most vigorously in its attempts to get free. Suspending the conversation for a moment, he held out between his finger and thumb the living prize — a plethoric and well - developed cockroach. The laughter oecame uproarious at once, and he needed no proferred explanation. The nauseating truth was clear to his mind. With a muttered imprecation he reached for his stovepipe, paid for his dinner with a sulphurous expletive, and departed thence in towering rage. The bewildered restaurant-keeper knows not yet the cause of so much hilarity on that eventful day, and is unable to account for the prolonged absence from his table d'hote of Mr. .