to and finished it, while the other guests were forced to make shift with the other partridge. Handel was a great eater. He was called the "Saxon Giant," as a tribute to his genius, but the phrase might have had a satirical reference to his enormous bulk. Intending to dine one day at a certain tavern, he ordered beforehand a dinner for three. At the hour appointed he sat down to the table and expressed astonishment that the dinner was not brought up. The waiter explained that he would begin serving when the company arrived. "Den pring up de tinner brestissimo," replied Handel, "I am de gombany." Lulli never forsook the _casserole_. Paganini was as good a cook as he was a violinist. Parke tells a story of Weichsell, not too celebrated a musician, but the father of Mrs. Billington and Charles Weichsell, the violinist: "He would occasionally supersede the labours of his cook, and pass a whole day in preparing his favourite dish, rump-steaks, for the stewing pan; and after the delicious viand had been placed on the dinner-table, together with early green peas of high price, if it happened that the sauce was not to his liking he has been known to throw rump-steaks, and green peas, and all, out of the window, whilst his wife and children thought themselves fortunate in not being thrown after them." Is there a cooking theme in _Siegfried_ to describe Mime's brewing? Lavignac and others, who have listed the _Ring motive_, have neglected to catalogue it, but it is mentioned by Old Fogy. Practically a whole act is taken up in _Louise_ with the preparation for and consumption of a dinner. Scarpia eats in _Tosca_ and the heroine kills him with a table knife. There is much talk of food in _Hansel und Gretel_ and there is a supper in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. There are drinking songs in _Don Giovanni_, _Lucrezia Borgia_, _Hamlet_, _La Traviata_, _Girofle-Girofla_.... The reference to whiskey and soda in _Madama Butterfly_ is celebrated. J. E. Cox, the author of "Musical Recollections," describes Herr Pischek in the supper scene of _Don Giovanni_ as "out-heroding Herod by swallowing glass after glass of champagne like a sot, and gnawing the drumstick of a fowl, which he held across his mouth with his fingers, just as any of his own middle-class countrymen may be seen any day of the week all the year round at the _mit-tag_ or _abend-essen_ feeding at one of their largely frequented _tables-d'hote_." Eating or drinking on the stage is always fraught with danger, as Charles Santley once discovered during Papageno's supper scene in _The Magic Flute_: "The supper which Tamino commands for the hungry Papageno consisted of pasteboard imitations of good things, but the cup contained real wine, a small draught of which I found refreshing on a hot night in July, amid the dust and heat of the stage. On the occasion in question I was putting the cup to lips, when I heard somebody call to me from the wings; I