THE HOPKINSONIAN JOKE.
My friend Hertford, walking one day near his own shop in Piccadilly, happened to meet one Mr. Hopkinson, an eminent brewer, I believe—and the conversation naturally enough turned upon some late dinner at the Albion, Aldersgate Street—nobody appreciates a real city dinner better than Monsieur le Marquess—and so on, till the old brewer mentioned, par hazard, that he had just received a noble specimen of wild pig from a friend in Frankfort, adding, that he had a very particular party, God knows how many aldermen, to dinner—half the East India direction, I believe—and that he was something puzzled touching the cookery. "Pooh!" says Hertford, "send in your porker to my man, and he'll do it for you à merveille." The brewer was a grateful man—the pork came and went back again. Well, a week after my lord met his friend, and, by the way, "Hopkinson," says he, "how did the boar concern go off?"—"O, beautifully," says the brewer; "I can never sufficiently thank your lordship; nothing could do better. We should never have got on at all without your lordship's kind assistance."—"The thing gave satisfaction then, Hopkinson?"—"O, great satisfaction, my lord marquess.—To be sure we did think it rather queer at first—in fact, not being up to them there things, we considered it as deucedly stringy—to say the truth, we should never have thought of eating it cold."—"Cold!" says Hertford; "did you eat the ham cold?"—"O dear, yes, my lord, to be sure we did—we eat it just as your lordship's gentleman sent it."—"Why, my dear Mr. Alderman," says Hertford, "my cook only prepared it for the spit." Well, I shall never forget how the poor dear Duke of York laughed!—Ibid.