CHAPTEK X 



AFTER DINNER 



How very good it is to think 



The world's so full of meat and drink. 



R. L. Stevexson. 



HEN Mr. John Jorrocks enun- 

 ciated his great dictum that 

 "All time wot ain't spent 

 in 'untin' is wasted!" it 

 is clear that he made it 

 with certain reservations in 

 favour of dinner, a subject 

 on which his views are pre- 

 served to us in some detail, 

 such as that the oldest port 

 wine is not necessarily the 

 Lest, that cheese is an effi- 

 cient material for filling the 

 chinks, and that one should always sleep and breakfast in the same 

 house as one dines. Indeed, he even went so far as to promise James 

 Pigg never to go hunting on " a drinking day." Few men who hunt 

 or love any kind of sport fail at some time or other to discuss 

 gastronomy, the proverbial saying, "As hungry as a hunter," 

 accounting for the fact. And was it not because he was famished 

 that Esau, on seeing Jacob sod the red pottage of lentils, sold his 

 birthright for a mess thereof ? 



" AV'ere I dines I sleeps, and w'ere I sleeps I breakfasts," is as 



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