There were humbler retreats at which the French manner of dining might be enjoyed. Soho was full of these small eating-houses at which the customers might either dine _à la carte_ at a moderate cost, or eat a dinner of the _table d’hôte_ order for eighteen pence, with half a bottle of wine thrown in. For this you would get a _soup maigre_, a _sole au vin blanc_, an entrée, a bit of chicken, a morsel of Brie or Camembert, and the smallest possible collection of nuts and raisins on a Tom Thumb plate, which was written down “dessert” on the menu. As a rule the dinner was not half bad, and the wonder was how it could be done at the price. Of the wine one cannot talk so enthusiastically. Charles Lever once described a vintage which he tasted in Italy. He spoke of it as “a pyroligneous wine, distilled from vine-stalks, and agreeable in summer—with one’s salad.” This admirably sets forth the virtues of the sour but ruddy products of Bordeaux which were “thrown in” by the enterprising exiles who catered in Soho. The best of these smaller restaurants was Kettner’s, in Church Street, close to where the Palace Theatre now stands. It is difficult, when one enters the elegant rooms which are now known as Kettner’s, to call up its small beginnings. Many of its old customers cursed the day when it was “discovered” by Mr. E. S. Dallas, of the _Times_. Dallas was a man who could not keep a secret. Having found out what a wonderfully well-cooked dinner the little restaurant in Church Street could supply to the customer for a very trifling cost, he must needs go and proclaim the fact from the house-tops of Printing House Square. All London began to flock to Church Street, and all London was delighted to see Madame Kettner presiding as _dame du comptoir_, and to learn that the dainty dishes provided were prepared by Monsieur Kettner in the basement below. This influx of visitors brought about increased accommodation, improved service, a greater luxury in the surroundings, until Kettner’s became what it is to-day—a West End resort with some considerable support from fashionable society. Prices went up, too. Dallas, who had very appropriately signed his letter to the leading journal “A Beast at Feeding-time,” could no longer get a portion of _sole au vin blanc_ for sixpence, and the poor French exiles who were wont to forgather in Kettner’s little dining-room in Church Street were driven forth to seek sustenance elsewhere in the fastnesses of Soho. I wonder what those patient old _émigrés_ would have said concerning an incident which happened to me some few years since at this famous restaurant? I was dining in a private room as the guest of a man who was wanting to “do business” with me. Beside myself there was one other guest. After dinner our host, who was a non-smoker, asked us to have a cigar. He called the waiter. Cigars were ordered. “Wat price, sare?” inquired the servant.