artaken of more than one.

_B_. Where?

_A_. I once sat down three hundred strong at the Freemasons' Tavern.

_B_. Pshaw! a mere hog feed.

_A_. Well, then, I dined with the late lord mayor.

_B_. Still worse. My dear Ansard, it is however of no consequence.
Nothing is more difficult to attain, yet nothing is more easy to
describe, than a good dinner. I was once reading a very fashionable
novel by a very fashionable bookseller, for the author is a mere
nonentity, and was very much surprised at the accuracy with which a good
dinner was described. The mystery was explained a short time
afterwards, when casually taking up Eustache Eude's book in Sams's
library, I found that the author had copied it out exactly from the
injunctions of that celebrated gastronome. You can borrow the book.

_A_. Well, we will suppose that done; but I am all anxiety to know what
is the danger from which the heroine is to be rescued.

_B_. I will explain. There are two species of existence--that of mere
mortal existence, which is of little consequence, provided, like Caesar,
the hero and heroine die decently: the other is of much greater
consequence, which is fashionable existence. Let them once lose caste
in that respect, and they are virtually dead, and one mistake, one
oversight, is a death-blow for which there is no remedy, and from which
there is no recovery. For instance, we will suppose our heroine to be
quite confounded with the appearance of our hero--to have become
_distraite, reveuse_--and, in short, to have lost her recollection and
presence of mind. She has been assisted to _filet de soles_. Say that
the only sauce ever taken with them is _au macedoine_--this is offered
to her, and, at the same time, another, which to eat with the above dish
would be unheard of. In her distraction she is about to take the wrong
sauce--actually at the point of ruining herself for ever and committing
suicide upon her fashionable existence, while the keen grey eyes of Sir
Antinous Antibes, the arbiter of fashion, are fixed upon her. At this
awful moment, which is for ever to terminate her fashionable existence,
the Honourable Augustus Bouverie, who sits next to her, gently touches
her _seduisante_ sleeve--blandly smiling, he whispers to her that the
_other_ is the sauce _macedoine_. She perceives her mistake, trembles
at her danger, rewards him with a smile, which penetrates into the
deepest recesses of his heart, helps hersel