ich you knew little, and of the latter
nothing. This alone is sufficient to determine the dispute. What a new
world of good things for eating and drinking has Columbus opened to us!
Think of that, and despair.

_Apicius_.--I cannot indeed but exceedingly lament my ill fate that
America was not discovered before I was born. It tortures me when I hear
of chocolate, pineapples, and a number of other fine fruits, or delicious
meats, produced there which I have never tasted.

_Darteneuf_.--The single advantage of having sugar to sweeten everything
with, instead of honey, which you, for want of the other, were obliged to
make use of, is inestimable.

_Apicius_.--I confess your superiority in that important article. But
what grieves me most is that I never ate a turtle. They tell me that it
is absolutely the best of all foods.

_Darteneuf_.--Yes, I have heard the Americans say so, but I never ate
any; for in my time they were not brought over to England.

_Apicius_.--Never ate any turtle! How couldst thou dare to accuse me of
not going to Sandwich to eat oysters, and didst not thyself take a trip
to America to riot on turtles? But know, wretched man, I am credibly
informed that they are now as plentiful in England as sturgeons. There
are turtle-boats that go regularly to London and Bristol from the West
Indies. I have just received this information from a fat alderman, who
died in London last week of a surfeit he got at a turtle feast in that
city.

_Darteneuf_.--What does he say? Does he affirm to you that turtle is
better than venison?

_Apicius_.--He says, there was a haunch of the fattest venison untouched,
while every mouth was employed on the turtle alone.

_Darteneuf_.--Alas! how imperfect is human felicity! I lived in an age
when the noble science of eating was supposed to have been carried to its
highest perfection in England and France. And yet a turtle feast is a
novelty to me! Would it be impossible, do you think, to obtain leave
from Pluto of going back for one day to my own table at London just to
taste of that food? I would promise to kill myself by the quantity of it
I would eat before the next morning.

_Apicius_.--You have forgot you have no body. That which you had has
long been rotten, and you can never return to the earth with another,
unless Pythagoras should send you thither to animate a hog. But comfort
yourself that, as you have eaten dainties which I never tasted, so the
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