Tuesday, June the 16th, 2009
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Should you find yourself consulting your hare oracle with unseemly frequency, or favouring it to such an extent that your crow oracle sits neglected on the shelf, you may be on the slippery slope to a hare mania leading to criminality. Here is a newspaper cutting from 1904. Consider it a warning.
HARES HIS RUIN
In sentencing a man at Marylebone yesterday for stealing a hare, Mr Plowden said to the prisoner, who had previously been bound over for a similar offence: “You are an honest man, I believe, except when you see hares. Then, your honesty completely breaks down. It's a good thing you don't live where hares are abundant.”
Source—Man Bites Man : The Scrapbook Of An Edwardian Eccentric, George Ives, edited by Paul Sieveking (Jay Landesman, 1980)