Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move or two and being usually equal to the time of day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter ; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don’t mind calling on you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.
—Charles Dickens
Some of the stuff in here is so witty you’d think you were reading “Jeeves & Wooster”!
Available on Archive.Org
And several other Editions
Erstwhile Human 