“Pray,” asked I, “are you in the habit of supplying your larder from Exeter ‘Change, or do you breed lions here like poultry?” “Sir,” answered the grim waiter, never relaxing into a smile, “we have lions brought us from the country every day.” “What do you pay for them?” said I. “About three and sixpence a-piece, Sir.” “Humph!--market in Africa overstocked,” thought I. “Pray, how do you dress an animal of that description?” “Roast and stuff him, Sir, and serve him up with currant jelly.” “What! like a hare?” “It is a hare, Sir.” “What!” “Yes, Sir, it is a hare! [Note: I have since learned, that this custom of calling a hare a lion is not peculiar to Cheltenham. At that time I was utterly unacquainted with the regulations of the London coffee-houses.]--but we call it a lion, because of the Game Laws.” ‘Bright discovery,’ thought I; ‘they have a new language in Cheltenham: nothing’s like travelling to enlarge the mind.’ “And the birds,” said I, aloud, “are neither humming birds, nor ostriches, I suppose?” “No, Sir; they are partridges.” “Well, then, give me some soup; a cotelette de mouton, and a ‘bird,’ as you term it, and be quick about it.” “It shall be done with dispatch,” answered the pompous attendant, and withdrew. Is there, in the whole course of this pleasant and varying life, which young gentlemen and ladies write verses to prove same and sorrowful,--is there, in the whole course of it, one half-hour really and genuinely disagreeable?--if so, it is the half-hour before dinner at a strange inn. Nevertheless, by the help of philosophy and the window, I managed to endure it with great patience: and though I was famishing with hunger, I pretended the indifference of a sage, even when the dinner was at length announced. I coquetted a whole minute with my napkin, before I attempted the soup, and I helped myself to the potatory food with a slow dignity that must have perfectly won the heart of the solemn waiter. The soup was a little better than hot water, and the sharp sauced cotelette than leather and vinegar; howbeit, I attacked them with the vigour of an Irishman, and washed them down with a bottle of the worst liquor ever dignified with the venerabile nomen of claret. The bird was tough enough to have passed for an ostrich in miniature; and I felt its ghost hopping about the stomachic sepulchre to which I consigned it, the whole of that evening and a great portion of the next day, when a glass of curacoa laid it at rest. After this splendid repast, I flung myself back on my chair with the complacency of a man who has dined well, and dozed away the time till the hour of dressing.