'你是从事什么案件目前在？' '你刚才停车多齿？' '你是什么人都转换了吗？'女士们不要把这些问题的人 - 律师，牙医，神职人员，等等 - 谁碰巧坐在旁边的宴会呢？
    我不知道是否各位从而表明在热情好客的董事会在其临时邻居的职业兴趣。但是，如果他们不认识我，或不知道我，他们一般问'你在写什么呢？' （因为如果他们要问一个画家的画，你现在什么？'或律师'你现在什么情况？'）。有时，他们更明确，并询问'你在写什么呢？'因为如果我必须要写的东西 - 这，的确是这样，虽然我不喜欢被它提醒。这是一个尴尬的问题，因为公平是不关心一个bawbee什么我写信，也将是非常开明的她，如果我回答说'主席，我从事旨在证明师范大学是前一个概念性Totemism'的论文， ，虽然这将作为回答，其实真正在意义模糊。最好的计划似乎是回答这个问题我已经完全放弃了单纯的文学，我考虑对'早疫病的原因马铃薯书，'忧郁的情况下，威胁要剥夺我们的行政可食的根我们。问的人永远不会怃。一位仙女谁，如休息，不能远离我的职业可怕的话题，说：'你写什么，但从来没有童话书，你呢？'一位法国绅士，也是一个教育家，在玛丽的画像专家，曾经给我一份报纸的文章，他写了，我是专门致力于童话书组成，而不是其他。然后，他来到英格兰，参观了我，发现我知道颇为玛丽比他更没有人像。
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    'What cases are you engaged in at present?' 'Are you stopping many teeth just now?' 'What people have you converted lately?' Do ladies put these questions to the men--lawyers, dentists, clergymen, and so forth--who happen to sit next them at dinner parties?
    I do not know whether ladies thus indicate their interest in the occupations of their casual neighbours at the hospitable board. But if they do not know me, or do not know me well, they generally ask 'Are you writing anything now?' (as if they should ask a painter 'Are you painting anything now?' or a lawyer 'Have you any cases at present?'). Sometimes they are more definite and inquire 'What are you writing now?' as if I must be writing something--which, indeed, is the case, though I dislike being reminded of it. It is an awkward question, because the fair being does not care a bawbee what I am writing; nor would she be much enlightened if I replied 'Madam, I am engaged on a treatise intended to prove that Normal is prior to Conceptional Totemism'- -though that answer would be as true in fact as obscure in significance. The best plan seems to be to answer that I have entirely abandoned mere literature, and am contemplating a book on 'The Causes of Early Blight in the Potato,' a melancholy circumstance which threatens to deprive us of our chief esculent root. The inquirer would never be undeceived. One nymph who, like the rest, could not keep off the horrid topic of my occupation, said 'You never write anything but fairy books, do you?' A French gentleman, too, an educationist and expert in portraits of Queen Mary, once sent me a newspaper article in which he had written that I was exclusively devoted to the composition of fairy books, and nothing else. He then came to England, visited me, and found that I knew rather more about portraits of Queen Mary than he did.