Of the dishes of my dinner, the excellent _Bortch à la Russe_ was served as it is in Russia, with little _pâtés_ to break into it. The list of these _pâtés_ in the menu of a Russian dinner is often a long one. The _filet de sole_, which M. Bonhomme paid me the compliment of christening to my name, is a quite admirable _sole poché au Madère_, with all the fumet of the fish retained and served with sliced _champignons_ and _pointes d'asperges_. I sent my very best compliments to M. Bonhomme on his masterpiece. The _coq en pâte_ is an ornamental dish, for the fowl stuffed with all manner of rich things is encased in a paste shaped like a cock, crest and all. The outer covering is broken before the bird is carved. It is a dish of almost terrifying richness. Quite a number of the great people of the land give their banquets at Claridge's, and out of the sheaf of the menus of these feasts I select one of the Surrey Magistrates' Club Dinner, which shows that our Solons across the Thames dine and wine with much discretion and taste: Royal Natives. Hors d'œuvre. Consommé Monte-Carlo. Bisque de Crabes. Turbotin braisé au Champagne. Whitebait diable noir. Selle de Béhague à l'Estragon. Haricots verts de Nice. Pommes nouvelles au Beurre. Timbale à la Galoise. Caneton d'Aylesbury à l'Anglaise. Salades d'Oranges. Asperges vertes Sauce Hollandaise. Pêches Melba. Friandises. Bonne Bouche. VINS. Oloroso Fine Old. Piesporter, 1904. George Goulet (mag.), 1900. Moët et Chandon. Dry Imper., 1904. Dow's 1896. Courvoisier Brandy. Fine Champagne, 1865. I wonder how a club dinner of magistrates of fifty years ago would contrast with such a dinner as the above. XII THE EUSTACE MILES RESTAURANT Old "Rats," which is the disrespectful title by which most of his friends call Major-General Sir Ulysses Ratbourne, late of the Bundlekund Fusiliers, was holding forth to his crony, Colonel Bunthunder, late of the same distinguished regiment, in the hall of the Cutlass and Cross-bow Club as I passed through it, and the General paused for a second in his denunciation of Radicals and Socialists to say that he wanted to have a word with me, and then finished his peroration. Colonel Bunthunder muttered: "Very true, very true," and went on into the smoking-room shaking his head sorrowfully, and the General turned to me.