223 



TURKEY AND 0TSTEB8. 



Many affinities lie dormant in Nature. 



How incredulous would have been the ancient 

 Briton in his light costume of woad, and the aboriginal 

 American in his war paint, had a Druid or a medicine- 

 man foretold that their far distant countries would 

 be linked together in gastronomic bonds, and that 

 the turkey and the oyster would be ever associated 

 in the minds of a future posterity! How their real 

 affinity was discovered is a problem as yet unsolved, 

 and too closely interwoven with the progress of 

 the human race to be examined in any work of less 

 dimensions than a folio. But the fact is patent, and 

 henceforth the turkey and the oyster are wedded 

 together as indissolubly as the bacon and beans of the 

 rustic, the whitebait and lemon-juice of the cabinet 

 minister, and the chops and tomato sauce of Mr. 

 Pickwick. 



I may be justified in supposing that in every house- 

 hold where this essay will be read — that is to say, in 

 every respectable household throughout the kingdom — 

 a hamper containing a tmrkey and a barrel of oysters 

 has either been received or sent as a present elsewhere 



