258 COOKERY OF THE PARTRIDGE 
them hot, with whatever accompaniments of bread- 
sauce, bread-crumbs, fried potatoes, or the like he 
pleases ; and those which are left to get cold he will eat 
exactly as they are for breakfast, with no condiment but 
salt and a little cayenne pepper. He will thus have 
one of the best things for dinner, and the very best 
thing for breakfast, that exists. The birds in roasting 
may be waistcoated, like quails, with bacon and vine- 
leaves if anybody likes, but with good basting and good 
birds it is not necessary. The more utterly ‘simple of 
themselves,’ as Sir John Falstaff said in another matter, 
they are kept the better. This is the counsel of per- 
fection if they are good birds of the old kind, young, 
wild, properly hung, and properly cooked. 
But counsels of perfection are apt to pall upon 
mankind : and moreover, unfortunately they are not 
invariably listened to by partridges. There are par- 
tridges which are not of the pure old kind—there 
are (fortunately perhaps in some ways, unfortunately 
in others) a great many of them. There are partridges 
which are not young, and which no amount of 
hanging will make so. There are partridges which 
have not eaten ants’ eggs, or have in their own self- 
willed fashion not eaten them sufficiently to give 
them the partridge flavour. And there are human 
beings who are either incapable of appreciating roast 
