Therefore, I was brought up to eat all sorts of queer things, a training that proved very useful in after-life when my travels took me from Iceland to Africa, from Lapland to Sicily, from Canada to Mexico. Sometimes I have lived on _foie gras_ and champagne, at others been glad of black bread—sometimes I have been amongst thousands of cattle on a ranch without a drop of milk or a pat of butter within hundreds of miles; often I have been far from butcher’s meat, and drunk milk from the cocoanut, or eaten steak from the elk, turtle from the river, or bear from the woods. Therefore, this paternal theory often held good and helped me over many an awkward moment. Which philosophy, however, was by no means called upon when the Chinese luncheon, to which I had been invited at my little tea-party, became soon after an accepted fact. It was a hot July Sunday. The door of the Legation in Portland Place was thrown wide open, and up the green-carpeted stairs I walked. We were only a party of four, as Lord Li laughingly remarked that there were not many people in London who would care for Chinese food. He need not have been so modest about it, for the dishes were really excellent. We were waited upon by a Chinese servant and an English butler. Needless to remark, the former was much the more picturesque. He was dressed in black, with high black velvet boots on his little feet, and though he looked about fourteen, the Minister assured me he was forty. He was barber, tailor, and butler. “These men can do anything,” said His Excellency; “I could not keep a man in London to shave my head once a week, nor would he have enough to do to make my clothes. The important suits are sent direct from China. The others are made and mended by this man. I have four Chinese in the house, and they eat and live together, the English servants being quite apart. But they do not quarrel; in fact, I believe they are very good friends.” My earliest recollections being of strange foods from many lands, it was not altogether a surprise to begin our repast with bird’s-nest soup, which was served in similar cups to that brought by Lord Li to my tea-party; the cup standing on a plate. At the bottom of the bowl was a small quantity of white, gelatinous compound, which looked almost like warm gelatine. Into this I was told to put a tablespoonful of strawberry jam, the whole strawberries of which I stirred up with the bird’s nest. Eaten with a spoon the two were very good. The Minister explained the delicacy thus. “There is a small sea-bird in China which builds its nest on the sides of the rock with the little fish it gets from the water. These nests become quite hard in the heat of the sun, and it is these that are collected and used for this soup. It is a delicacy, quite expensive, and never eaten by ordinary people, but used more like your turtle soup on great occasions.”