But you, Reader, would like more circumstantiality in the account of this dinner, which united many perfections. It was handsome, but not splendid,--orderly, but, not stately,--succulent, but not unctuous. It kept the word of promise to the smell and did not break it to the taste. It was a dinner such as we shall wish only to our best friends, not to those acquaintances who ask how we do when they meet us, and wish we were dead before we part. As for particulars, we should be glad to impart much useful information and many choice receipts; but the transitory nature of such an entertainment does not allow one to improve it as one could wish. One feature we remember, which is that the whole dinner was placed on the table at once, and so you had the advantage of seeing your work cut out before you. None of that hope deferred, when, after being worried through a dozen stews and _entrées_, you are rewarded at last with an infinitesimal fragment of the _rôti_. Nor, on the other hand, the unwelcome surprise of three supplementary courses and a dessert, when you have already dined to repletion, and feel yourself at peace with all the world. Here, all was fair play; you knew what to expect and what was expected of you. Soup, of course, came first,--then fish,--then meat stewed with potatoes and onions,--then other meat with _ochra_ and tomatoes,--then boiled chicken, which is eaten with a _pilaff_ of rice colored with saffron,--then delicious sweet potatoes, yams, plantains, and vegetables of every sort,--then a kind of pepper, brought, we think, from the East Indies, and intensely tropical in its taste,--then a splendid roast turkey, and ham strewed with small colored sugar-plums,--then--well, is not that enough for one person to have eaten at a stretch, and that person accustomed to a Boston diet? Then came such a display of sweetmeats as would exercise the mind of a New England housekeeper beyond all power of repose,--a pudding,--a huge tart with very thick crust,--cakes of _yuca_,--a dish of cocoanut, made into a sort of impalpable preserve, with eggs and sugar,--then a course of fruits,--then coffee, of the finest quality, from the host's own plantation,--and then we arose and went into the drawing-room, with a thankful recollection of what we had had, and also a thankful assurance that we should have no more.