For, oh, my friends! what pang is
comparable to too much dinner, save the distress of being refused by a
young woman, or the comfortless sensation, in times of economy, of
having paid away a five-dollar gold piece in place of a silver quarter
of a dollar?
But you, Reader, would like more circumstantiality in the account of
this dinner, which united many perfections. It was handsome, but not
splendid,--orderly, but, not stately,--succulent, but not unctuous. It
kept the word of promise to the smell and did not break it to the
taste. It was a dinner such as we shall wish only to our best friends,
not to those acquaintances who ask how we do when they meet us, and
wish we were dead before we part. As for particulars, we should be glad
to impart much useful information and many choice receipts; but the
transitory nature of such an entertainment does not allow one to
improve it as one could wish. One feature we remember, which is that
the whole dinner was placed on the table at once, and so you had the
advantage of seeing your work cut out before you. None of that hope
deferred, when, after being worried through a dozen stews and
_entrees_, you are rewarded at last with an infinitesimal fragment of
the _roti_. Nor, on the other hand, the unwelcome surprise of three
supplementary courses and a dessert, when you have already dined to
repletion, and feel yourself at peace with all the world.
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