te and
black calls "a dinner off the Joint, sir," with what belongs to it, and
ended up with an attack on a section of a cheese as big as a bass-drum,
not to forget a pewter mug of amber liquid, I felt as if I had touched
bottom again,--got something substantial, had what you call a square
meal. The English give you the substantials, and better, I believe, than
any other people. Thackeray used to come over to Paris to get a good
dinner now and then. I have tried his favorite restaurant here, the
cuisine of which is famous far beyond the banks of the Seine; but I
think if he, hearty trencher-man that he was, had lived in Paris, he
would have gone to London for a dinner oftener than he came here.

And as for a lunch,--this eating is a fascinating theme,--commend me to
a quiet inn of England. We happened to be out at Kew Gardens the other
afternoon. You ought to go to Kew, even if the Duchess of Cambridge is
not at home. There is not such a park out of England, considering
how beautiful the Thames is there. What splendid trees it has! the
horse-chestnut, now a mass of pink-and-white blossoms, from its
broad base, which rests on the ground, to its high rounded dome; the
hawthorns, white and red, in full flower; the sweeps and glades of
living green,--turf on which you walk with a grateful sense of drawing
life directly from the yielding, bountiful earth,--a green set out
and heightened by flowers in masses of color (a great variety of
rhododendrons, for one thing), to say nothing of magnificent greenhouses
and outlying flower-gardens. Just beyond are Richmond Hill and Hampton
Court, and five or six centuries of tradition and history and romance.
Before you enter the garden, you pass the green. On one side of it
are cottages, and on the other the old village church and its quiet
churchyard. Some boys were playing cricket on the sward, and children
were getting as intimate with the turf and the sweet earth as their
nurses would let them. We turned into a little cottage, which gave
notice of hospitality for a consideration; and were shown, by a pretty
maid in calico, into an upper room,--a neat, cheerful, common room,
with bright flowers in the open windows, and white muslin curtains
for contrast. We looked out on the green and over to the beautiful
churchyard, where one of England's greatest painters, Gainsborough, lies
in rural repose. It is nothing to you, who always dine off the best at
home, and never encounter dirty rest