for the shabbiness of the entrance, our host conducts us—by the back way by mistake—into a dining place. A flare of unshaded gas lights up a small, old-fashioned room, the floor of which is covered with sawdust. The ceiling is white, with projecting cross-beams, and at one side of the room is a long oak table, at which Johnson, Goldsmith, and a few other choice spirits, were wont to sit and feed; and here, it is said, originated the well-known riddle about the number of beefsteaks it would take to reach the moon. All along one side of the room are wooden partitions, exactly like old-fashioned pews, with hard, cushionless sets. One of our party says, as she sits down, that she feels as if she were in church; we devoutly wished she would _behave_ a little more as though she were there, long before the evening was over; but reaction having set in, we are all, I fear, in a terribly frivolous humour, not by any means in keeping with the solemn respectability of our surroundings, for we are told that this chop-house has been in existence ever since the year 1667, and is no ephemeral mushroom-house of the hour, to be sought out one day and forgotten the next.... Our pew just holds six comfortably, and we sit down three and three, opposite each other, on either side of a very narrow table covered with a spotless white cloth. We have willow-pattern plates, large and hot for the meat, and small and cold, each with a pat of butter on it, for our potatoes. First, we have thick slices of hot ham, the lean tender and pink and the fat succulent, with an immense dish of the most delicious peas I ever ate, and young potatoes served in their jackets. Anyone who has tasted a fresh-run salmon which has been green-kippered, and has compared it with the hard, salt fish that is cured for the London market, will appreciate the difference between an ordinary ham and one that is prepared for immediate consumption. These Yorkshire hams were not intended for keeping, and, as the cook afterwards informed us, were all eaten up in a day. I could easily have believed her if she had said one was eaten up at every meal, judging by the thickness of the slices to which we were helped, and the amount we were supposed to eat of them. The next dish is a point steak, rosy without being _saignant_, accompanied by fresh dishes of young peas and potatoes.... Our somewhat eccentric dinner is brought to a close by a bowl of rum punch, accompanied by six long churchwarden pipes and a glass full of bird’s-eye tobacco.” FOOTNOTES: [1] Serviettes are now provided as a matter of course. [2] A more extensive menu is now provided. CHAPTER V ABOUT THE PUDDING Now, good digestion wait on appetite And health on both.—SHAKESPEARE. “How do you make it?” asked a fair American of the proprietor.