Natives. Petite Marmite. Saumon Sauce Genévoise. Blanchailles. Caille à la Cavour. Jambon d'York aux Petits Pois. Caneton de Rouen à la Presse. Salade d'Orange. Asperges Sauce Divine. Bombe Alexandra. Friandises. Os à la Moëlle. Café. Dessert. VINS. Graves Monopole, Dry. Heidsieck and Co., 1898. Louis Roederer, 1899. Ch. Le Tertre, 1888. Martinez Port, 1884. Denis Mouniés, 1860. Liqueurs. As a final word of praise for the Café Royal, let me record that just as many of its waiters grow grey-headed in its service, so the steps of any man who is a lover of good cheer and who has been an habitué of the restaurant seem unconsciously to lead him to its doors. It was my first love amongst the restaurants, and--well, you know how the proverb runs. VIII OYSTER-HOUSES The great catastrophe of my life, I think, was that the first oyster I ate was a bad one. I was at school for a year or two at Dedham, as a preparation for Harrow, and Dedham is in Essex, and not far from Colchester. An old man used to wheel a barrow of oysters to the playing field, and dispensed his shell-fish at a penny an oyster. One day when I was in funds I thought that I would begin to enjoy the luxuries of life, and bought an oyster. That oyster was a bad one. Not just an ordinary bad oyster, but of a superlative badness, the most horrible oyster that any small boy ever tried to swallow--and failed. The memory of that oyster kept me for many years from making a second attempt. When I was first bidden to a Colchester oyster feast and sat amidst Cabinet Ministers and mayors and aldermen in their robes of office, and generals and admirals all pitching into the bivalves like winking, I, to the great surprise of the waiters, ate twice as many oysters as any alderman present. Had I been given an opportunity of making a speech after lunch I should have told the assembled company that my unparalleled feat in the absorption of Colchester natives that day was my revenge for the horrors of the first Colchester oyster I tried to eat one sunlit spring afternoon on the Dedham playing field. I have not yet been invited by a Mayor of Whitstable to accompany him to sea to eat oysters afloat on the first day of the dredging season, but I have eaten many oysters plain and oysters scalloped at the "Bear and Key," and I never have had a grudge against any individual Whitstable oyster,