“Gentlefolks in general have a very awkward rock ahead in life–the rock ahead of their own idleness. Their lives being, for the most part, passed in looking about them for something to do, it is curious to see–especially when their tastes are of what is called the intellectual sort–how often they drift blindfold into some nasty pursuit. Nine times out of ten they take to torturing something, or to spoiling something–and they firmly believe they are improving their minds, when the plain truth is, they are only making a mess in the house. I have seen them (ladies, I am sorry to say, as well as gentleman) go out, day after day, for example with empty pill-boxes, and catch newts, and beetles, and spiders, and frogs, and come home and stick pins through the miserable wretches, or cut them up, without a pang of remorse, into little pieces. You see my young master, or my young mistress, porting over one of their spiders’ insiders with a magnifying -glass; or you meet one of their frogs walking downstairs without his head–and when you wonder what this cruel nastiness means, you are told that it means a taste in my young master or my young mistress for natural history. Sometimes, again, you see them occupied for hours together in spoiling a pretty flower with pointed instruments, out of a stupid curiosity to know what the flower is made of. Is its colour any prettier, or its scent any sweeter, when you do know? But there! the poor souls must get through the time, your –they must get through the time.”
Gabriel Betteredge in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone
