The last-named dish is one which Sciolists are perpetually calling _filet à la Chateaubriand_, saddling the poetic defender of Christianity with an invention in cookery of which he was never capable. I approved the new-comer, who was writing half a dozen notes with his mouth full, for his nicety in nomenclature: to get the right term, even in kitchen affairs, shows a reflective mind and tenderness of conscience. My friend the engineer arrived, and placed himself in the chair I had turned up beside my own. I was ashamed of the rate at which I advanced through my capon, but I recollected that Anne Boleyn, when she was a maid of honor, used to breakfast off a gallon of ale and a chine of beef. My canal-maker interrupted me with a sudden appeal. "Listen--listen yonder," he said, jogging my knee, "it is very amusing. He is in a high vein to-day." The gray coat, who had already directed four or five letters, and was cleaning his middle finger with a lemon over the glass bowl, had just opened a lofty geographical discussion with the bluebottle. I cannot express how eagerly I, as a theorist of some pretension in Comparative Geography, awoke to a discussion in which my dearest opinions were concerned. "Geography," the active gentleman was saying as he dipped his finger in water to attach the flaps of his envelopes--"geography, my dear professor, is the most neglected of modern sciences. Excuse me if I take from under you, for a moment, your doctoral chair, and land you on one of the forms of the primary department. I would ask a simple elementary question: How many parts of the globe are there?" "Before the loss of Alsace and Lorraine," said the professor with plaintive humor, "I always reckoned six." "Very well: on this point we agree." "Six!" said the Scotchman in great surprise. "You are liberal: I make but five." "Not one less than six," said the patriot, vastly encouraged with the support he got: "am I not right, sir? We have, first, Europe--" "Ah, professor," said the silver-gray, interrupting him, "how is this? You, such a distinguished scholar--you still believe in Europe? Why, my dear sir, Europe no longer exists--certainly not as a quarter of the globe. It is simply, as Humboldt very truly remarks in his _Cosmos_, the septentrional point of Asia." The surprise seemed to pass, at this point, from the face of the Scot to that of the Strasburger. After reflecting a moment, "Really," murmured he, "I recollect, in _Cosmos_--But how, then, do you reach six parts of the globe?" "Only count, professor: Asia, one; Africa, two; Australia, three; Oceanica, four; North America, five; and South America, six." "You cut America in two?"