Listen, then, and know all ye of the softer sex; and if you want anything out of this same human nature, wait till the corn is planted, and then look out for your harvest.
Knowing all this, and how mollifying is the influence of food, we should prefer the interval following his last anthropophagia in our visit to the cannibal; and, therefore, urged by a desire to see our enemy of the badge at his best, we walk down this street to the left, and somewhere about half-way down we find a perennial fountain in the shape of an iron post with a hole in its side by which to wind it up. There are some squat, tubby-looking little pails in a row; while close by stands a shiny-hatted straw-bit besprinkled Triton blowing his pipe. The water looks cool and limpid, but hard by is the gin a trap within an open door. Gin and water a potent mixture; but in this case the master takes the gin, and the horse the water. The horses look hot and stuffy this sunshiny day, as they stand with their cabs in a row down the long street, nose-bagged and contemplative, but they evidently find considerable enjoyment in banging their chaff-holding receptacles against the back of the cab in front, or resting them upon spring or wheel.
But where are the drivers the supplanters of the Jehu, the jarvey of hackney-coach days the men who place a bit in the mouths of their steeds, but prefer a sup in their own the men who guide and rein them in their course and check the prancings of their hoofs where are they? At their best. Cabby dineth! Dine we with him.
Up this shady little street, and into this shady shop none the cooler for it though; while phew! the steam! Six, ten, fifteen hams in the window; legs, loins, shoulders, all sorts of mutton; beef joints by the dozen; and all hanging ready for to-morrows consumption. And to-days?
This way, sir; room in that box to the left.
We enter that box to the left, and find the room very small, and also that we are elbowed by the people Pegging away at their dinner; while, if we closed our eyes for a moment, we should be ready to take oath that we were neither in the shop of Rimmel, Hendrie, nor Atkinson. But, sinking the sentimental, and setting aside the too great smell of kitchen when a hot cinder has quenched its glow in the dripping-pan, the odour is not so very bad, and we prepare to eat.
Now, we have eaten in a variety of places in our time, and with the eating we have drunk quaffing the regal wine of Champagne
in an ex-palace that is to say, emptied glasses of what was said to be genuine Clicquot; but we dare not venture to assert that it was not gooseberry. Reversing Mr Hullahs legend, per scalam ascendimus, we have dined off an Abernethy biscuit and a pennorth of shrimps in a recess of Waterloo Bridge a redbait dinner in a granite hall, with a view of the river both ways, equalling or excelling that from Lovegroves; and, therefore, we were not above asking the opinion of friends right and left as to the quality of the joints on cut.
Try the beef, guvner, says a gentleman in the style of head-dress known as a deerstalker, which he wore while he trowelled his dinner into his mouth with the blade of a very wide knife. Try the beef, guvner the weal and am wont do. Somethins turned, either the weal or my stummick.
A gentleman in a great-coat on my right suggests line o mutton, while a very red-nosed man in front red-nosed, but the very antithesis of the holy Stiggins quotes beefsteak pudding; but we like the look of the beef proposer, and the sound of the dish; so, forgetful of rinder and every other pest, we seek to gain the attention of the hot nymph in waiting. No easy task, though, for the maiden, evidently own sister of the Polly who captivated Smallweed, junior, is in all directions in the space of a few seconds.
In luck though at last, and we announce that we will take a plate of beef roast.
And taters?
And taters.
And brockylow?
And brockylow.
Stout?
Stouts hard, hints our beefy friend, and we decide upon half-and-half.
Five minutes after we are served with a prime plate off some prime ribs of beef, three fine potatoes in their brown jackets, grinning all over, and looking temptingly mealy-mouthed; a tolerably fine head of broccoli that would suggest cathoppers and grassipillars were the season more advanced, while even now one cannot help shuddering and thinking of Fenianism and slugs; a bread; and, lastly, the beer supposed to be soft, or rather not hard.
Now, if the place had been ventilated, twenty degrees cooler, free from steam, smell, and tobacco smoke; it the knives had been what the cloth should have been, and what the salt was not; if my neighbours had not picked their teeth with their forks; if the mustard-pot had had no pipe ashes in its jaundiced throat; if the pint pots had not made the tables quite so gum-ringed; and lastly, and very briefly, if Cabby himself had been a little less demonstrative in his eating, and a little more guarded in his conversation: why, we could have made a very satisfactory dinner. But as the few above-mentioned trifles, and a mangy dog at our feet, militated against our getting a comfortable meal, why, the result was not quite so well as might be expected.