1832.] Calamities of Carving. 157 



At length I succeeded in mastering the difficulty of the knife and 



fork as far as regarded this preliminary step ; but, truly is it said 



'.'Bil won 



" Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclin'd." ;i j noijiaiujvjji 



Carving was still my abhorrence. An expert carver was ever allied, in 

 my imagination, to an executioner, or headsman. He who asserts a 

 liking for the art, tells us, we know, a gratuitous falsehood. Your pro- 

 fessed carver is a lover of good dinners, a man of tit-bits; his passion 

 for which has conferred upon him the facility of dissection. Can it be 

 credited, then, that he is fond of an art, which imposes the obligation of 

 offering the choicest parts to others in entire exclusion of himself? Can 

 he expect us to believe that he desires to sit utterly dinnerless two or 

 three times a week, as infallibly he must, if he acquit himself in the 

 style the hateful office enjoins ? Yet, as I cannot compete with, let me 

 not abuse him. If absurd custom demands that the lady of the house 

 must sacrifice one of her guests to the comfort of the others ; or if any 

 one, in an insane moment, volunteers himself as the victim, he gains a 

 reputation which I have never been able to achieve by similar means. 

 It were vain to recount the miseries in which my want of relish for this 

 mystery have involved me. Not to mention the positively painful 

 situations in which it has placed me, the minor distresses I have endured 

 are beyond the power of enumeration. 



Judging by the obstacle the barbarous art of carving has proved to 

 my views, and observing the beneficial effect which has attended adepts 

 in it, I conclude the man who can carve well to be in the direct road 

 to the highest offices of church and state ; and if I were asked what 

 were the three grand requisites for success in life, I should unhesitat- 

 ingly reply, in full conviction of the truth, the first, carving the 

 second, carving the third, carving. 



I was designed for the church, and despite of my lack of qualification 

 in the carving art, which, with men of my cloth, is considered nearly 

 as essential as subscription to the thirty-nine articles, I entered into 



orders. The living of S soon afterwards became vacant, and the 



bishop of the diocese, to whom I was slightly known, and who had 

 been oil terms of intimacy with my father, expressed himself disposed 

 to confer it upon me. The friend to whom I owed this communication, 

 gave me, at the same time, an invitation to dinner for a day in the fol- 

 lowing week, adding that his lordship would be of the party. I would 

 fain have declined this intended kindness ; but reminded that the bishop 

 would be there, whom it was important I should meet that my tem- 

 poral interests might greatly depend upon it, I consented, but with a 

 reluctance which, though not expressed, ill comported with the service 

 my friend conceived he was rendering me. 



The chance of being placed next to some dish which might call my 

 carving into play, would, in this instance, have dictated a refusal, and 

 in all cases the apprehension has heavily outweighed any enjoyment, 

 which otherwise 1 might have anticipated. Many a time have I dressed 

 to join a convivial dinner-party with the same stagnation of feeling, the 

 same half-conscious sense of the operation, with which a culprit pre- 

 pares himself for the scaffold. My mind recoils at the jostling, the 

 shuffling, and manoeuvring, I have been guilty of to avoid proximity to 

 a particular dish, which might be supposed to contain a joint ; in fact, 

 I have always shirked a large cover, as though a living tiger were 



