take a plain cheese-biscuit, heat it, but do not scorch it, in the oven. Then spread over it a paste composed of finely-powdered lobster worked up with butter, made mustard, ground ginger, cayenne, salt, Chili vinegar, and (if you can stand it) a little curry powder. Reheat the biscuit for a short time, and then deal with it. But, after all, fresh air and exercise are the best of all restoratives; and most of the above recipes are adduced in the interest of the jaded Londoner, or the dweller in cities, to whom a ride, or a walk, save on Sundays and Bank holidays, {210} is a rarity. Get on your hack and gallop a dozen miles to covert. By the time you have mounted your first hunter, you will have forgotten all about the dog which may have bitten you on the previous night, and will also have forgotten a stern resolution made, whilst shying at your breakfast, never again to put whisky, however old, atop of claret. And by the time you have jumped three ox-fences, and a great yawning drain big enough and deep enough to bury the whole field, you will have recovered every bit of that “nerve” about which you had just a suspicion of a doubt, just before mounting your hack. God grant that nerve may be with you always! {211} CHAPTER XIX THE DRINKS OF DICKENS The lesson taught by “Boz” — Clothing Christmas — Dickens’s drunkards — Fantastic names for ales — Robbing a boy of his beer — A school supper — Poor Traddles — Micawber and punch — Revelry at Pecksniff’s — Todgers’s “doing it” — Delights of the “Dragon” — Sairey Gamp’s requirements — What was in the teapot — The “Maypole” — Sydney Carton’s hopeless case — Stryver’s model — “_Little D._ is Deed nonsense” — Dear old Crummles — A magnum of the Double Diamond — Newman Noggs — Brandy before breakfast — Mr. Fagin’s pupils — Orange-peel and water — Quilp on fire — “Pass the rosy” — Harold Skimpole — Joey Bagstock — Brandy-and-tar-water — That ass Pumblechook — An inexhaustible bottle — Jaggers’s luncheon — Pickwick _v._ total abstinence — Everything an excuse for a dram — Brandy and oysters — “The inwariable” — Milk-punch — Charm of the _Pickwick Papers_.