PURSER SHAW: I never said that the dog was wrong in his choice of food. I have no objection to eating dog biscuit; what I do object to is eating dog soup.... What I do object to is eating a soup which professes to be made of vegetables and in reality is made of dog. I see no moral objection to cannibalism. I have no moral objection to eating shoulder of boatswain; but I do object to the old-fashioned superstition of believing that soup is still made of fresh peas when _it isn’t_. That soup was made of old flesh. If you don’t believe me, ask the steward. Here, Steward. (_Enter Steward Beerbohm_) CAPTAIN MEREDITH: Our battle is ever between undeserved rewards and stolen fruits. What say you, Steward? STEWARD BEERBOHM: Let us forget these bickerings and turn ourselves lightly to the thought of home, of Piccadilly, of the artificial haunts and the gaudy hostels, where indifferent cooks and careless waiters proffer inartistically prepared _mets_ to the blasé, the faded and the jaded and the new rich, who partake of it with feigned satisfaction, and pay for it with a faint but exquisite pleasure in knowing that the bill is more than they can afford. PURSER SHAW: Your Piccadilly is here and now. I venture to submit that the Steward is an incurable romantic. Now romance in food is preposterous. COOK CHESTERTON: There is nothing so romantic as food, nothing so poetic as roast beef, nothing so fantastic as plum-pudding, nothing so lyrical as eggs and bacon, nothing in cant modern sense so artistic as a mutton chop, nothing so dreamy as toasted cheese. PURSER SHAW: Exactly. You are still infected with the poison of your nurseries and the sentiment of Christmas. I have exploded Christmas. I have annihilated the nursery. STEWARD BEERBOHM: I think Christmas very quaint and charming, and a nursery, conducted according to the principles of the early years of Victoria the First, a place of dainty manners and delicate precepts and wistful rhymes. I would not forget them for anything. FIRST MATE JAMES: The word nursery, now you speak it, throws a curious thrill through the lining, so to speak, of the psychological situation. We might, in fact, in such a case even follow the steward into another and no less refined a speculation, the question of whether the nursery, the sanest seat of moral ethics, might not, after all, be the high final if somewhat narrow circle of all ultimate--that is to say-- CAPTAIN MEREDITH: To have the sense of the eternal in the nursery is nothing. To have had it is the beginning of wisdom. But let us rather put off discussion of the theme, until round the mahogany we can broach a bottle of the Old Widow, nay rather, Hermitage--ah! that was a great wine--