"There was a madman in Seville who was taken with the oddest
and craziest notion that ever a madman had in the world. It was
this: he made a tube out of a cane, sharpened at the end, and
catching a dog, in the street or elsewhere, he would hold down
one of its hind legs with one foot and lift the other one up with his
hand. Next, fitting his tube to the right place, he would blow into it,
as best he could, till he had made the dog as round as a ball. Then,
holding it up in this way, he would give it a couple slaps on the
belly and let it go, saying to the bystanders, - and there were
always plenty: 'Your worships will perhaps be thinking that it is an
easy thing to blow up a dog?' - Does you worship think it is an
easy thing to write a book?"
-Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Translation by J. M. Cohen
Penguin Books Ltd, 1950
(p. 468 of 1958 edition)
All that's missing is plenty of bystanders to witness the
transaction...