106 WHERE TO FISH. 



Where they get the shapes of meat which they 

 sometimes produce, I cannot divine. The very 

 bones of the chops seem different to those 

 belonging to ordinary sheep or goats double 

 as long while the meat, which is fastened to 

 them by thews of twisted gimp, causes the teeth 

 of a mincing machine to ache in anticipation. 



I remember once asking my landlady if she 

 could manage to give me a fowl for Sunday 

 midday dinner; and after a long morning spent 

 in looking for white violets, I looked forward ta 

 the comely form of a roast chicken, with perhaps 

 bread sauce and chipped potatoes. The cooking 

 and the serving had been deputed to her small 1 

 maid. At length the dinner hour arrived, and 

 when the soup plate was removed from the dish. 

 a curious sight and steamy odour alarmed the 

 senses. 



In the dish was a substance which I took at 

 first for an unfortunate boiled suet pudding, or 

 an overlooked bran mash. It was without form 

 or void, and emitted a suppressed hissing sound; 

 in fact it moved uneasily in the dish like cooling 

 lava, as though it had been well below the face 

 of the waters during a volcanic period. I 

 touched it with a fork, and after slight pressure 

 the leg bone of a fowl or rabbit came through 

 as clean as a museum skeleton. A further 

 probing proved that all the bones were there. 

 They were curiously mixed however, wings and 

 legs being indistinguishable. It was not a 

 roast fowl at all. No, it must have been boiled. 

 It certainly looked as though the boiling had 



