negar or sauces, piled another series of thick slices
on his plate, now hot to liquefy the gravy, and added to the meat a just
proportion of vegetables. In proportion and a just mixture the secret of
eating successfully consisted, according to him.

First he ate a piece of the dark brown mutton, this was immediately
followed by a portion of floury potato, next by a portion of swede
tops, and then, lest a too savoury taste should remain in the mouth, he
took a fragment of bread, as it were to sweeten and cleanse his teeth.
Finally came a draught of strong ale, and after a brief moment the same
ingredients were mixed in the same order as before. His dinner was thus
eaten in a certain order, and with a kind of rhythm, duly exciting each
particular flavour like a rhyme in its proper position, and duly putting
it out with its correct successor. Always the savour of meat and gravy
and vegetables had to be toned down by the ultimate bread, a vast piece
of which he kept beside him. He was a great bread eater--it was always
bread after everything, and if there were two courses then bread between
to prepare the palate, and to prevent the sweets from quarrelling with
the acids. Organization was the chief characteristic of his mind--his
very dinner was organized and well planned, and any break or disturbance
was not so much an annoyance in itself as destructive of a clever
design, like a stick thrust through the web of a geometrical spider.

This order of mouthfuls had been explained over and over again to the
family, and if they felt that he was in a more than usually terrible
mood, and if they felt his gaze upon them, the family to some extent
submitted. Neither Mrs. Iden nor Amaryllis, however, could ever educate
their palates into this fixed sequence of feeding; and, if Iden was not
in a very awful and Jovelike mood, they wandered about irregularly in
their eating. When the dinner was over (and, indeed, before it began)
they had a way of visiting the larder, and "picking" little fragments of
pies, or cold fowl, even a cold potato, the smallest mug--a quarter of a
pint of the Goliath ale between them, or, if it was to be had, a sip of
port wine. These women were very irrational in their feeding; they
actually put vinegar on cold cabbage; they gloated over a fragment of
pickled salmon about eleven o'clock in the morning. They had a herring
sometimes for tea--the smell of it cooking sent the master into fits of
indignation, he abo