A stew is prepared with the following ingredients: 1 lb. bullock's cheek (3½d.), ½ pint white beans (1d.), ½ pint lentils (1d.), pot-herbs (1d.), 2 lb. potatoes (1d.)--Total 7½d. When he has friends, the banquet is more expensive: 1 lb. bullock's cheek (3½d.), ½ lb. cow-heel (2½d.), ½ lb. leg of beef (3d.), 1 pint white beans (2d.), ½ pint lentils (1d.), pot-herbs (1d.), 5 lb. potatoes (2d.)--total 1s. 3d. As we never know what may happen, the above _menus_ may come in useful. _Doctor Nansen's Banquet_ on the ice-floe, to celebrate his failure to discover the Pole, was simple enough, at all events. But it would hardly commend itself to the _fin de siècle_ "Johnny." There was raw gull in it, by way of a full-flavoured combination of _poisson_ and _entrée_; there was meat chocolate in it, and peli--I should say, pemmican. There were pancakes, made of oatmeal and dog's blood, fried in seal's blubber. And I rather fancy the _relevé_ was _Chien au nature_. For in his most interesting work, _Across Greenland_, Doctor Nansen has inserted the statement that the man who turns his nose up at raw dog for dinner is unfit for an Arctic expedition. For my own poor part, I would take my chance with a Porterhouse steak, cut from a Polar bear. _Prison Fare._ Another simple meal. Any visitor to one of H.M. penitentiaries may have noticed in the cells a statement to the effect that "beans and bacon" may be substituted for meat, for the convicts' dinners, on certain days. "Beans and bacon" sounds rural, if not absolutely bucolic. "Fancy giving such good food to the wretches!" once exclaimed a lady visitor. But those who have sampled the said "beans and bacon" say that it is hardly to be preferred to the six ounces of Australian dingo or the coarse suet-duff (plumless) which furnish the ordinary prison dinner. For the tablespoonful of pappy beans with which the captive staves off starvation are of the _genus_ "haricot"; and the parallelogram of salted hog's-flesh which accompanies the beans does not exceed, in size, the ordinary railway ticket. CHAPTER X VEGETABLES "Herbs and other country messes, Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses." Use and abuse of the potato--Its eccentricities--Its origin--Hawkins, not Raleigh, introduced it into England--With or without the "jacket"?--Don't let it be _à-la_-ed--Benevolence and large-heartedness of the cabbage family--Peas on earth--Pythagoras on the bean--"Giving him beans"--"Haricot" a misnomer--"Borston" beans--Frijoles--The carrot--Crécy soup--The Prince of Wales--The Black Prince and the King of Bohemia.