HOW TO DIVIDE EGGS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1769, 23 August 1884, Page 2

HOW TO DIVIDE EGGS.

How to divide tive eggs between three people is a problem which might fairly puzzle a philosopher, but the practical genius of Prince Bismarck has solved that, as it has solved many other difficulties which have proved too much for profound thinkers. The only wonder is that, as he made the discovery as many as thirteen years ago, it should only now have been given to ! the world in tl|e pages of the Deutsche Kevue. It appears that on the evening of Gravelotte, after a day whnn the Prince, like everybody else, had nothing to eat, and was hungryhungrier, we may presume, than anybody. He had, however, the good fortune to secure five eggs for twenty francs, and the generosity to share them with two of his companions, But foreseeing the mathematical difficulty which would arise, if he were to attempt an equal division, he. took the precaution to eat twoof the five himself first, and then dashed oil to bis comrades, and with a great show of magnanimity made a fair distribution of the remaining three, keeping to himself all knowledge of the two he had so conveniently got rid of. A rapacious Statesman would have kept all the eggs and a Quixotic statesman would have kept only one of them, But it is Prince Bismarck's peculiar distinction to combine sedulous attention to the interest of number one with an effective display of unselfishness. He has divided countries ere now on the principle on which ho dealt with the tive eggs.—Pall Mall Gazette.