Three pounds of veal fillet, trimmed, and larded with fat bacon. Put in the glazing stewpan the trimmings, two ounces of sliced carrot, two ditto onion, with pepper and salt. Lay the _fricandeau_ on the top; add half a pint of broth; boil the broth till it is reduced and becomes thick and yellow; add a pint and a half more broth, and simmer for an hour and a quarter--the stewpan half covered. Then close the stewpan and put live coals on the top. Baste the _fricandeau_ with the gravy--presumably after the removal of the dead coals--every four minutes till it is sufficiently glazed; then take it out and place on a dish. Strain the gravy, skim off the fat, and pour over the meat. It may be added that a spirit lamp beneath the dish is (or should be) _de rigueur_. In their clubs, those (alleged) "gilded saloons of profligacy and debauchery, favoured of the aristocracy," men, as a rule dine wisely, and well, and, moreover, cheaply. The extravagant diner-out, with his crude views on the eternal fitness of things, selects an hotel, or restaurant, in the which, although the food may be of the worst quality, and the cookery of the greasiest, the charges are certain to be on the millionaire scale. For bad dinners, like bad lodgings, are invariably the dearest. _At the Mess-Table_ of the British officer there is not much riot or extravagance nowadays, and the food is but indifferently well cooked; though there was a time when the youngest cornet would turn up his nose at anything commoner than a "special _cuvée_" of champagne, and would unite with his fellows in the "bear-fight" which invariably concluded a "guest night," and during which the messman, or one of his myrmidons, was occasionally placed atop of the ante-room fire. And there was one messman who even preferred that mode of treatment to being lectured by his colonel. Said officer was starchy, punctilious, and long-winded, and upon one occasion, when the chaplain to the garrison was his guest at dinner, addressed the terrified servant somewhat after this wise: "Mr. Messman--I have this evening bidden to our feast this eminent divine, who prayeth daily that we may receive the fruits of the earth in due season; to which I, an humble layman, am in the habit of responding: 'We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.' Mr. Messman, don't let me see those d----d figs on the table again."