ll; since people in a high state of civilization, like
Mr. Claudius Bagshaw and his friends, cannot eat raw chickens, they did
the only thing they could under the circumstances,--they grumbled
exceedingly, and put them back again into the basket. This was a serious
deduction in the important point of quantity, and Uncle John felt a
slight touch of remorse at having thrown, as he thought, his friend's
Italian sausage into the Thames. However, there was still provision in
the garrison. But the run of luck in events, as at a game of whist, may
be against you; and when it is so, be assured that human prudence and
foresight--remarkable as even Mrs. Bagshaw's, who bespoke her pigeons
seven weeks before she wanted them--avail but little. When the packages
were first stowed in the boat, the pigeon-pie was inadvertently placed
at the bottom, and everything else, finishing with the large heavy
hamper of crockery, with Carlo on that, upon it; so that when it was
taken up it appeared a chaotic mass of pie-crust, broken china, pigeons,
brown paper, beefsteak, eggs, and straw!

"Now this is enough to provoke a saint!" said Bagshaw; and no one
attempting to deny the position, with this salvo for his own character
of philosophic patience, he indulged himself in the full expression of
his vexation and sorrow. After a minute examination, he declared the pie
to be "a complete squash," and that nobody could venture to eat it but
at the imminent risk of being choked. As he was about to throw it over
the hedge, Miss Snubbleston, seized with an unusual fit of generosity,
called out to him,--

"What _are_ you doing? Though it isn't fit for us to eat, it will be
quite a treat to the poor watermen. I dare say, poor souls, they don't
often get pigeon-pie."

But the good genius of Mr. Carlo prevailed; and the truth of the adage,
"'tis an ill wind that blows nobody good," was confirmed in his mind as
he found himself busily employed in the ingenious operation of
separating pigeon from porcelain. It was, doubtless, extremely ill-bred
in one dog not to invite another, and Cupid expressed his sense of the
slight by a long-continued yell, which drew down upon him, from the
equally disappointed bipeds of the company, sundry wishes, the positive
accomplishment of which would not have tended much to his personal
happiness. The next basket was opened. Things were not altogether in a
desperate state. Mr. Wrench's ham was in perfect order, and that, with