[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

“Now, Timothy,” exclaimed Harry Archer, as he
dismounted from the seat of his wagon at the door,
“run in, and see what o'clock it is; and then ask Mrs.
Deighton if dinner will be punctual.”

“It's haaf paast faive, sur,” answered Timothy from
the hall, “and t' dinner ”ll be upon t' teable at six, and
no mistaek!”

“That's well—for I'm as hungry as a hawk”—said
Archer. We shall have just enough time to make
ourselves comfortable, Fred. Where the deuce do
you mean to stow yourself Frank?”

“Oh! never fear. I have arranged that with Timothy—
I shall take possession of his room to-night.”

“Very well—now lose no time lads; for Mrs.
Deighton's six is sharp six you'll remember. Look
here, Tom, you will find this week's Spirit here, and
the last Turf Register, can you amused yourself with
them, 'till we get fixed, as you'd call it, I suppose?”

“Yes! yes”—answered Tom, “I'll amuse myself,
I promise you; but it won't be with no sperrit but
Jamaiky sperrits—them's the best sperrits for an arternoon.
Come, Timothy, you lazy injun, where are you
snoopin' off to, cuss you? Git me the sperrits and ice
water—your master haint got sense to order up no
licker.”

“If you have not got sense to order what you want
in my house, I am not bound to find you in brains.”

“The rum will find his brains, I'll warrant it,” said
Forester, “for I am certain whatever brains he's got,
are in his belly.”

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

“Sartain!”—responded Tom—“Sartain they be—
that's why its sich a nice, fat, round one.—No head
wouldn't hold my brains! a stoopid little know
nauthen, like you be, may keep his small mite o'
brains in his head, though it beant no bigger than a
nutshell—but it does take a belly, and a good, rousin',
old, biggest kind o' belly, to hold mine.—And the rum
will find them torights, and sharp them up too wust
kind, I reckon.”

“You do not make much toilet, Harry, I presume,”
asked Fred, as he sauntered away toward his bed-room,
after staring at old Tom in a vain attempt to make him
out, for half a moment.

“Just as you please about that, Fred. This is
liberty-hall. But I do always dress for dinner even
when I am quite alone.”

“The deuce you do! That must be a monstrous
bore!”

“Have you known Archer so long,” asked Frank
Forester, “and not discovered yet that his greatest
pleasure in life is boring himself.”

“It's very well his greatest pleasure in life aren't in
borin' other people, as you calls it,” interposed Tom,
who was growing a little crusty at the non appearance
of the ardent—“Least ways I know whose is—hey?
Little wax skin?”

“I do not find it so,” continued Harry, without
taking heed of the bye-play between Forester and old
Draw, who were forever sparring one with the other—
“on the contrary! I think life is not worth having if
we strip it of the decencies; and, living as I do in the
country, three fourths of the year, and more than half
the time alone, I find there is much more danger of becoming
somewhat slovenly and careless, than of being
over nice. When you don't meet a lady three times
in a year, or a man who shaves above twice a week,
unless on special occasions, it is easy enough to

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

degenerate into a mere boor.—I at least will keep clear of
that. Some folks think it manly and knowing to assimilate
themselves to the roughest and the rudest of the
rough and rude, because they chance to live in remote
rural districts, I am not one of them.”

“I don't think no one will find fault with you for
that, no how,” interposed Tom, “no one who knows
you. The darned critter's allus dressed as neat as a
new pin. And his dinner table, oh h—l, its just like
a jeweller's shop in Broadway.”

“Yes—and of that more anon—I have been attacked
for that too, before now.—But we'll talk about that,
while we are feeding; hey Tom?”

“I'm willin' so as you aren't over long a dressin'.”

“Well, here comes the Jamaica for you; and I will
not be a quarter of an hour.”

Nor was he; for in a little more than ten minutes he
returned, neatly attired in a puce-colored cut-away
coat, white waistcoat and black trousers, as natty and
well-dressed as possible, but without a shade of foppery—
the thing which of all he most abhorred—perceptible
either in his exterior or his manner.

A moment afterward Frank Forester made his entree,
and as usual his practice was as different from his principle,
as anything in nature could be. To judge him
from his talk you would have supposed that a red flannel
shirt and tow trousers, were his ultimatum and
beau ideal in the way of dress, yet forth he came, very
fine—to say the truth, a little too fine!—so fine, indeed,
that it required all his remarkably good looks and
quiet manner, to redeem his attire from the charge of
being kiddy at least, if not tigerish.

He wore the full dress blue coat of his old corps—
the first dragoons—a crack royal regiment, which he
had left but a year or two before—with its richly embossed
gold buttons, and black velvet cuffs and collar.
His shirt was rich with open work and mecklin lace,

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

and fastened in front by enamelled studs of exquisite
workmanship connected by slight chains of Venetian
gold. His crimson velvet waistcoat was adorned with
garnet buttons, and his trousers of Inkson's most
elaborate cut, fitting his shapely leg as if they had been
made upon it, displayed his high instep très bien
chausseè in a black gauze silk stocking, and patent
leather pumps.

Tom Draw stared somewhat wildly, at this display,
of which he certainly had never seen before even the
counterfeit presentment; and, though he was rigged
himself in his best swallow-tailed sky-blue, canary
colored waistcoat, and gray inexpressibles, he began to
think, as he afterward expressed himself, that he had
nauthen on him no how, barrin' his skin, and that
rayther o' the thinnest, and the dirtiest at that.

Scarcely was Frank well established in Harry's best
arm-chair, before Fred made his appearance in a plain
snuff-colored dress coat, and the rest of his garb quiet,
dark, and unpretending.

“Why what's all this about, in the name of wonder?”—
he exclaimed, looking at Frank attentively.

“Only a little of the heavy dragoon breaking out,
Fred,” answered Archer, it does so periodically—like
the fever and ague—and like it, thank heaven! it is
not catching. If I were to live a thousand years I
never should forget the first day I saw my gentleman
in this country.—He was walking up Broadway, arm
in arm with poor Power who had just landed on his
second visit to this country.—They had two of the narrowest
pinch up hats—Tom Duncombe's, only more so! —
stuck in the most jaunty style on the opposite sides
of their heads—each had his outer hand, as they swaggered
along arm in arm, stuck in the hind pocket of
his coat, and the skirt well brought round on the opposite
hip—each, to complete the picture, at every second
pace, gave the genuine sabretash kick with the outer

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

leg—unluckily in poor Power's case it was the right
leg—but that made no difference in life—and then the
toggery! Only conceive Master Frank, in a bright
pea-green body coat, with large basket buttons of solid
silver—a crimson cachemire neckcloth—elastic tartan
pantaloons, a little tighter than his skin, alternate
checks, each check two inches square, of black and the
brightest azure, and to conclude, more chains and spurs
and iron boot heels—more clash and clang, in walking
along the street, than there are to be found in a squadron
of cuirassiers. By Jove! It was inimitable!”

“What did you do, Harry?”—asked Fred laughing,
while Frank tried to grin, though not with the best
grace in the world.

“Do? Bolted to be sure! what would you have had
me do?—I would not have spoken to him in the street
in that rig for any sum! I was not very well known
in New York myself at that time, and I saw old Hays
on the other side of the street quietly contemplating my
friend there, with a cool confidential nod of the head,
and wink addressed to his own other eye—as who
should have said, `Aha! my fine fellow, it will not be
many days, before you and I shall be better acquainted!
' ”

What exclamation or asseveration would have followed
can never now be known, for just as Forester
stood up, not a little nettled, Timothy threw the door
open, and said,

“T' dinner's upon t' teable, please sur.”

And thereupon Frank's face relaxed into a mild and
placid smile, and drawing Tom's arm under his own,

“Allow me the honor,” he said, “Mistress Draw,
to hand you into dinner.”

“No you don't little wax skin—no you don't—not
through that door no how, we'd git stuck there, boy,—
and they'd niver pull us out; and we'd starve likely
with the smell o' the dinner in our noses, and

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

the champagne a bustin' under our eyes out o' the very
bottles to be drinked, and us not there to drink it.
No, no, we'll run no resks now.”

And with the words they passed into the dining-room,
arranged as on the previous evening except that,
for two covers, four were now laid on the white damask
cloth, and that a pair of tall silver wine coolers occupied
the centre of the table with the long necks of hock
and champagne flasks protruding.

At the left of each guest, stood a pint decanter of
delicate straw-colored sherry; and at his right, four
glasses, a long stalked beaker of old-fashioned Venice
crystal, a green German hock glass embossed with
grapes and vine leaves, a thin capacious sherry glass
with a curled lip so slender that it almost bent as you
drank from it, and a slim-shanked shallow goblet for
Bourdeaux or Burgundy.

There was but one comestible, however, on the table,
a deep silver tureen, with a most savory and game-like
odor exuding from the chinks of its rich cover.

“I would have given you some raw natives to begin
with,” said Harry, “knowing how much Tom likes
them, but we can't get the crustaceous bivalves up
hither with distinguished success, until the frost sets in.”

“I'm right glad on't, by the Etarnal!” exclaimed
Tom, “nasty, cold, chillin', watery trash! jist blowin'
out your innards for no good, afore you git to the grist
o' dinner—what kind o' soup's that, Timothy?”

“A soup of my own invention”—answered Harry—
“and the best soup in the world me judice.—Strong
venison soup, made as we make hare soup at home—
a good rich stock to begin with, about ten pounds of
the lean from the haunch brayed down into the pottage,
about a dozen cloves and a pint of port, and to conclude,
the scrag of the neck cut into bits two inches
square, done brown in a covered stew pan, and thrown
in with a few forced meat balls when the soup is

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

ready. You can add if you please, a squeeze of a
lemon and a dash of cayenne, which I think improve it.
It is piping hot; and not bad I think.”

“I have tasted something of the kind in the Highlands,
at Blair of Athole,” said Frank Forester.

“I have not,” replied Harry. “The Scotch venison
soup, is made clear, and though a capital thing, I like
this pureè better.”

“So do I, Harry,” said Fred Heneage—“and I
should think by the gusto with which you speak of it,
that you not only invented, but made it.”

“You'd think just about right, then,” answered
Tom, as he thrust out his plate for a second ladle full.
“He and I did make the first bowl of it, as iver was
made. And it tuk us a week—yes, a fortnight I
guess, before we got it jest right. I will say that for
Harry! the darned critter, is about as good as bringing
game up right on the table, as he is at bringing them
down right in the field.”

“Yes! and for that very thing, I have been assailed,”
said Harry laughing, “as lacking the true spirit of a
sportsman, as not enjoying the thing in its high ennobbling
spirit, as not a pure worshipper in heart and intellectual
love of the divine Artemis, but a mere sensualist,
and glutton, making my belly a god, and degrading
my good gun into a mere tool for the slaves of
Epicurus!”

“Treason! high treason! name the rash man! Hold
him up bodily to our indignation!”

“First let us drink!—That pale sherry is delicate and
very dry. Will you have champagne, Tom?—No—
very well—Here is a health then to C. E. of the Buffalo
Patriot.”

“C. E!—Who the devil is C. E?”—cried all three
in a breath.

“Alias, J B.”

“And who then is J B?”

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

“The man wot stabbed me in the tenderest part—
which he, I suppose, would say is my abdomen?”

“Are you in earnest, Harry?”

“I am gravely in earnest, when I say that he taxed
me seriously, though sportively, with all that I have
stated.—He said that, in my admiration of good things,
in dwelling on the melting richness of a woodduck, or
the spicy game flavor of a grouse, in preferring a silver
plate whereon to eat my venison, to an earthern trencher,
in carrying out a bottle of champagne and cooling it
in a fresh spring for my luncheon, instead of trusting
to execrable rye or apple whiskey, I prove myself degenerate
and no true votary of the gentle woodcraft.
He is afraid that I cannot rought it!”

“Is he, indeed?—Poor devil!”

“He don't know much then, no how, that chap!”
answered Tom, as he went largely into the barbacued
perch, which had taken the place of the pottage—
“Least ways he don't know much, if he thinks as a
chap carn't rough it becase he knows how to eat and
drink, when there's no need of roughing it. I've seen
fellows as niver had seen nauthen fit to eat nor drink
in their lives, turn up their darned nasty noses at a good
country dinner in a country tavern, where a raal right
down gentleman, as had fed allus on the fat of the land,
could dine pleasantly. Give me a raal gentleman, one
as sleeps soft, and eats high, and drinks highest kind,
to stand roughing it—and more sense to C. E., next
time he warnts to teach his grandmother.”

“How do you like this fish?”

“Capital—capital?”

“Well, all its excellence, except that it is firm, lies
in the cookery.—It is insipid enough and tasteless, unless
barbacued.”

“Then you were wise to barbacue it.”

“And how should I have learned to barbacue it; if I
had not thought about such things. No, no boys—I

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

despise a man very heartily, who cannot dine just as
happily upon a bit of salt pork and a biscuit, and perhaps
an onion, aye! and enjoy it as well, washed down
with a taste of whiskey qualified by the mountain brook—
or washed down with a swallow of the brook unqualified—
as he would enjoy canvass-back and venison
with champagne and Bourdeaux.—Who cannot
bivouack as blithely and sleep as soundly under the
starlit canopy of heaven as under damask hangings—
when there is cause for dining upon pork, and for
bivouacking.—But there is one thing, boys, that I despise
a plaguy sight more—and that is a thick-headed
fool, who likes salt pork as well as canvass-back and
turtle.—Who does not see any difference between an
ill-cooked dish swimming in rancid butter, and a chef
d'æuvre of Carême or Ude, rich with its own pure
gravy? and yet more than the thick-headed fool, do I
abhor the pig-headed fool, who thinks it brave forsooth
and manly and heroical withal, and philosophical, to
affect a carelessness, which does not belong to him, and
to drink cider sperrits when he can drink Sillery sec of
the first growth! And that being said, open that champagne,
Timothy.”

“So much for C. E?”—enquired Forester.

“No no!” exclaimed Harry, eagerly—“I deny any
such sequitur as that, C. E. is a right good fellow—or
was, at least when I knew him—It is a weary while
ago since he supped with me in New York, the very
night before he left it—never I believe to return—at
least since then I have never seen him—and many a
warm heart has grown cold, and many a brown head
gray in the interim. But when I knew C. E. he would
never drink bad liquor when he could come by good—
and right well did he know the difference—and by the
way, while vituperating me for my gourmandize, he
shows that he is tarred a little with the same stick. He
abuses me for saying that the woodduck is as good a

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

bird as flies, except the canvass-back, asserting that
the blue-winged teal is better.”

“Out upon him!” exclaimed Forester—“the blue-winged
teal is fishy, nine times out of ten.”

“Aye! Frank—but he is speaking of the teal on the
great lakes; and I dare say he is right. It is to the
fact that he is the only duck seen on the sea board,
who eschews salt water and salt sedges that the summer
duck—for that is his proper name—owes his pre
ëminence over all the other wild fowl of this region.—
Now, as the blue-winged teal, or Garganey, is in the
same predicament on the lakes, I think it very questionable
whether in that country he may not be as good,
nay better than my favorite.”

“Are you in earnest? Do you think that the diet
of ducks makes so much difference in their quality,”
asked Heneage.

“So much? It makes all the difference.—What
renders the canvass-back of the waters of the Chesapeak,
the very best bird that flies; while here, in Long
Island sound, or on the Jersey shore he is, at the best,
but a fourth rate duck.—The wild celery, which he
eats there, and which he cannot get here, for his
life.”

“A roast leg of mutton?—by no means a bad thing,
Harry”—said Fred Heneage—“when it is old enough
and well roasted.”

“This is six years old,” answered Archer—“Black
faced, Scotch, mountain, of my own importation, my
own feeding, and my own killing. It has been hanging
three weeks, and, by the way it cuts, I believe it is
in prime order—done to a turn I can see that it is.
Will you have some?”

“Will a fish swim?—Where is the currant jelly?”

“On the side board. I don't consider currant jelly
orthodox with mutton, which is by far too good a
thing to be obliged to pass itself for what it is not.”

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

“I agree with you,” said Frank—“I hate anything
that is like something else.”

“Of course—all good judges do. That puts me in
mind of what Washington Irving once told me, that
he never ate clams, by any chance, because he was
quite sure that they would be oysters if they could!”

“Excellent! excellent!” said Fred and Forester,
both in a voice; whereupon Tom added,

“They carn't come it though—stewed clams is not
briled iseters!”

“No more than mosquitoes are lobsters, which was
John Randolph's sole objection to the insects.”

“And do you really prohibit currant jelly with roast
mutton?”

“I don't prohibit anything—but I don't eat it, and
I think it bad taste to do so. Venison I think the only
thing that is improved by it. Canvass-back ducks I
think it ruins. Nor should I think C. E's plum jelly
with grouse, one whit better. The sharpness of currant
jelly is very suitable to the excessive fat of English
park-fed venison; but with any lean meat I think it
needless, to say the best. There is but one sauce for
any kind of gallinaceous game, when roasted, whether
his name be grouse, partridge, pheasant, quail, or wild
turkey.”

“Right, Harry, and that is bread sauce.”

“And that is bread sauce; made of the crumb of a
very light French roll, stewed in cream and passed
through a tamis, one small white onion may be boiled
in it, but must be taken out before it is served up to
table, a lump of fresh butter as big as a walnut may be
added, and a very little black pepper. Let it be thick
and hot, and nothing else is needed; unless, indeed,
you like a few fried crumbs, done very crisp and
brown.”

“Open that other flask of champagne, Timothy—
Tom's glass is empty, and he begins to look angry.

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

Will you take wine with me?” said Heneage, who had
hit Tom's feelings to a hair.

“In course, I will”—replied Tom joyously, “when
Harry gits a talking about his darned stews and fixins,
he niver recollects that a body will git dry.”

“Pass it round, Timothy,” said Harry—“that's not
a bad move of old Tom's by any means. I believe
I was riding one of my hobbies a little hard. But it
provokes me to see the good things, which are destroyed
in this country by bad cookery; and it provokes me
yet worse, to hear hypocrites and fools talk as if it were
wrong for the creature to enjoy the good things designed
for his use by a good Creator.”

“It is about as rational truly as to assert that it is
impious to plant a tree or cultivate a bed of exotics
in order to make finer a view naturally beautiful;
because Providence did not plant them originally
there.”

“Yes! Sartain! yes I go that,” said old Tom, who
was always death again humbugs, as he would have
said himself—“or wicked to wear breeches becase
natur did not fix them on our hinder eends in the
creashun. I do think, too, though I niver hearn of it
'till Archer come up this a-way, and larned us how to
eat and drink, as bread sauce doos go jist as nat'rally
with roast quails, as breeches on a—”

“Shut up you old sinner,” said Harry laughing.
“Here come the ruffed grouse, larded and boiled, for
boiling which Fred so abused me this morning.”

“He won't abuse you, when he has once tasted
them,” said Forester. “It is the best way of cooking
them.”

“Well—yes—they bees kind o' dry meat, roasted;
but then I don't find no great faults with the dryness—
specially when one's got jist this wine, to wrench his
mouth with arter.”

“They are good—with this celery sauce especially.”

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

“As is bread sauce to roast, so is celery sauce to
boiled game—Q-e-d.”

“There is a soupçon of onion in this also, is there
not?”

“Just enough to swear by—do you think it too
much?”

“I did not say a taste, I said a soupçon—are you
answered?”

“There aint no Souchong in it no how—nor no
Hyson, nother. He'll be a swearin' it's Java coffee
next”—said Tom, waxing again somewhat wrothy.

“He is thirsty again,” said Frank—“what shall it
be; I say hock after this boiled white meat.”

“Right, Frank, for a thousand!” said Harry, “and
after the woodcock, which Tim is bringing in, we'll
broach a flask of Burgundy.—Hock with your white
game, Burgundy with your brown! But hold, hold!
Timothy, Mr. Draw will not touch that hock—it's too
thin, and cold for his palate.”

“Rot-gut!”—replied Tom—“None o' your hocks
nor your clarets for me—there aint no good things
made in France except champagne wine and old Otard
brandy.”

“Well, which of two will you have, Tom?”

“That 'are champagne 's good enough for the likes
of me.”

“Oh! don't be modest, pray. It will hurt you!”

“What this here wine?—not what I've drinked on
it, no how—I could drink all of a dozen bottles of it,
without its hurtin' me a mite.”

The woodcock followed, were discussed, and pronounced
perfect; they were diluted with a flask of
Nuits Richelieu, so exquisitely rich and fruity, and of so
absolute a bouquet, that even the hostility of fat Tom
toward all French wines was drowned in the goblet,
thrice the full of which, mantling to the brim, he quaffed
in quick succession.

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

The Stilton cheese, red herring, and caviare, which
succeeded, again moved his ire, and were denounced
as stinkin' trash fit for no one to eat but a darned
greedy Englishman; but the bumper of port again
mollified him, and he said that if they ate them cussed
nasty things jist to make the wine taste the better for
the contrast, he didn't see no sense in that, for it was
mazin' nice without no nastiness afore it.

The devilled biscuits he approved mightily, as creating
a wholesome drought, which he applied himself to
assuage by emptying three bottles of pale sherry to his
own cheek, while the three young men were content
with one double magnum of Chateau Latour. But
when he emptied the third bottle he was as cool and
collected as if he had not tasted a single drop, and was
half disposed to run rusty, at being summoned into the
library to take a cup of coffee and an old cheroot—but
here again his wrath was once more assuaged by the
curaçao, of which he drank off half a tumbler, and
then professed himself ready for a quiet rubber, while
Tim was gittin supper.

p145-114

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