"And grow fat! Why! you both look so well fed, you are just fit for killing! I shall be obliged to shut you up two or three days, without anything to eat, as is done to pet lap-dogs, when they are getting corpulent and gouty." "Then we shall be like bears living on our paws," replied Harry, "and uncle David! I would rather do that, than be a glutton like Peter Grey. He went to a cheap shop lately, where old cheese-cakes were sold at half-price, and greedily devoured nearly a dozen, thinking that the dead flies scattered on the top were currants, till Frank shewed him his mistake!" "Frank should have let him eat in peace! There is no accounting for tastes. I once knew a lady who liked to swallow spiders! She used to crack and eat them with the greatest delight, whenever she could catch one." "Oh! what a horrid woman! That is even worse than grandmama's story about Dr. Manvers having dined on a dish of mice, fried in crumbs of bread!" "You know the old proverb, Harry, 'one man's meat is another man's poison.' The Persians are disgusted at our eating lobsters; and the Hindoos think us scarcely fit to exist, because we live on beef; while we are equally amazed at the Chinese for devouring dog pies, and birds'-nest soup. You turn up your nose at the French for liking frogs; and they think us ten times worse with our singed sheep's head, oat cakes, and haggis." "That reminds me," said Lady Harriet, "that when Charles X. lived in what he called the 'dear Canongate,' His Majesty was heard to say, that he tried every sort of Scotch goose, 'the solan goose, the wild goose, and the tame goose; but the best goose of all, was the hag-goose.'" "Very polite, indeed, to adopt our national taste so completely," observed uncle David, smiling. "When my regiment was quartered in Spain, an officer of ours, a great epicure, and not quite so complaisant, used to say that the country was scarcely fit to live in, because there it is customary to dress almost every dish with sugar. At last, one day, in a rage, he ordered eggs to be brought up in their shells for dinner, saying, 'that is the only thing the cook cannot possibly spoil.' We played him a trick, however, which was very like what you would have done, Harry, on a similar occasion. I secretly put pounded sugar into the salt-cellar, and when he tasted his first mouthful, you should have seen the look of fury with which he sprung off his seat, exclaiming, 'the barbarians eat sugar even with their eggs!'" "That would be the country for me to travel in," said Harry. "I could live in a barrel of sugar; and my little pony, Tom Thumb, would be happy to accompany me there, as he likes anything sweet."