Profoundly grateful, and as if I had swallowed a small baby. … Why, they are perfect beasts of oysters!

Thackeray's reply when asked how he felt upon eating an unusually large American oyster during his first visit to the United States (1852–3); reported in James Grant Wilson, Thackeray in the United States: 1852–3, 1855–6 (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1904), pp. 81–82.