26 OLD-FASHIONED HOUR6. 



distant one or two miles from their stores or places of 

 business, any one may well imagine the amount of time 

 lost in going to and coming back from the points in ques 

 tion. Indeed, these gentlemen lose what in England 

 would be called the best of the day. 



Often did I attempt to combat these erroneous regula 

 tions thus existing among my hospitable friends, and 

 jokingly point out to them not only their loss of time in 

 locomotion, but the fact that they were fitter men for the 

 affairs of merchandise or dollars when their cheeks were 

 cool, their stomachs empty, and their brains free for cal 

 culation, than they were when oppressed by dinner, 

 flushed, and jovially happy. It was all in vain ! They 

 would not permit innovation nor the introduction of re 

 form even into their means of health or wealth ; so I fre 

 quently dined when I was not hungry, and was made 

 hopelessly to essay the digestion of the " devil and all 

 his imps," who were dancing a polka for my punishment, 

 for the sins of others, on my breast throughout the night. 



There was no complaint to be made with the things 

 mine excellently good and liberal host of the Clarendon 

 Hotel caused to be set before you in the bill of fare for 

 breakfast, dinner, tea, or supper. The choice was ample 

 and the material good ; but, hear it, deity of the gas 

 tronomic realms, they harshly split and broil their wood 

 cocks, and divest them of their trail! I remember ex 

 plaining to one of these innocents in the culinary line, 

 or rather fiends, according to the old saying that " Hea 

 ven sends food and Satan cooks," that the woodcock and 

 English snipe should never be drawn, and that both 

 should be underdone, or what the Americans call "rare." 

 On explaining that the trail was the delicacy of wood 

 cock, snipe, and red mullet, I thought the unsophisticated 



