f our coasts
and provincial cities, east and west, is borne to us on the swift lines
of lightning railroads. In a word--and no man but one who, like The
Agent, has travelled Europe over, can appreciate the gift--there is no
city on earth's surface so well supplied with fish as London!

"With respect to our meats, all praise is supererogatory. Ask the
wretched hunter of chevreuil, the poor devourer of rehbraten, what they
think of the noble English haunch, that, after bounding in the Park of
Knole or Windsor, exposes its magnificent flank upon some broad silver
platter at our tables? It is enough to say of foreign venison, that THEY
ARE OBLIGED TO LARD IT. Away! ours is the palm of roast; whether of the
crisp mutton that crops the thymy herbage of our downs, or the noble ox
who revels on lush Althorpian oil-cakes. What game is like to ours? Mans
excels us in poultry, 'tis true; but 'tis only in merry England that the
partridge has a flavor, that the turkey can almost se passer de truffes,
that the jolly juicy goose can be eaten as he deserves.

"Our vegetables, moreover, surpass all comment; Art (by the means of
glass) has wrung fruit out of the bosom of Nature, such as she grants to
no other clime. And if we have no vineyards on our hills, we have gold
to purchase their best produce. Nature, and enterprise that masters
Nature, have done everything for our land.

"But, with all these prodigious riches in our power, is it not painful
to reflect how absurdly we employ them? Can we say that we are in the
habit of dining well? Alas, no! and The Agent, roaming o'er foreign
lands, and seeing how, with small means and great ingenuity and
perseverance, great ends were effected, comes back sadly to his own
country, whose wealth he sees absurdly wasted, whose energies are
misdirected, and whose vast capabilities are allowed to lie idle. . . ."
[Here should follow what I have only hinted at previously, a vivid and
terrible picture of the degradation of our table.] ". . . Oh, for a
master spirit, to give an impetus to the land, to see its great power
directed in the right way, and its wealth not squandered or hidden, but
nobly put out to interest and spent!

"The Agent dares not hope to win that proud station--to be the destroyer
of a barbarous system wallowing in abusive prodigality--to become a
dietetic reformer--the Luther of the table.

"But convinced of the wrongs which exist, he will do his humble endeavor
to set them rig