tful case. Lay to. 'The art of
cookery,' says Henry Cornelius Agrippa, 'is very useful if not
dishonest.' My appetite is good, and I trust you are all likewise
minded, for Beaumont and Fletcher say, 'What an excellent thing God
did bestow upon man when he gave him a good appetite. Mine is almost
equal to that of Erisichthon described by Ovid,--

'Thus Erisichthon's profane chops devour
All sorts of food: in him food is the cause
Of hunger: and he will employ his jaws
To whet his appetite.'

"'Tis said that Maximus, the Emperor who succeeded Alexander Memneaus,
consumed forty pounds of flesh in one day, and drank an amphora of
wine containing forty-eight quarts.

"Waiter, pass your wines. No blue ruin or heavy wet. In the days of
the great Caesar all feasts began with eggs and ended with fruits,
cream and apples; hence the proverb, _ab avo usque ad mala_, and the
man who did not crush his eggshell or put his folded napkin on his
left knee, was considered a fool. As we have not eggs we will do our
best with the napkins. No melancholy subjects at this table. So here's
luck." And all drank a bumper.

"Did you ever hear how Pope Julius III. became enraged against his
cook for not having saved him a cold peacock for supper, and how he
began to blaspheme? Whereupon one of his cardinals said to him, 'Let
not your Holiness be so moved with a matter of so little weight.'
'What!' said the pope, 'if God was so angry for one apple that he cast
our first parents out of Paradise, why may not I, his vicar, be angry
for a peacock, sithers a peacock is greater than an apple?'

"The oysters from Tarentum, so prized by one of the Caesars, I forget
which, were not to be compared to these. Captain, take a hand at them.
Let me give you a song."

And with a sweet melodious voice and a Scotch accent, he sang Burns's
Ode on the Haggis.

"'Fair, fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the pudding race:
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Paunch, tripe, or thairm;
Weel are ye worthy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.'

"This bird is excellent; whoever cooked it,

'His name should be enrolled
In Estcourt's book, whose gridiron's framed of gold.'

"Help yourselves, gentlemen, digestion is the business of the stomach,
and indigestion that of the physicians. It is better to dine late, for
one can then concentrate all his thoughts upon his plate, forge