for mixing purposes.
One ounce of Seville orange-peel, half an ounce of gentian-root, a quarter of an ounce of cardamoms. Husk the cardamoms, and crush them with the gentian-root. Put them in a wide-mouthed bottle, and cover with brandy or whisky. Let the mixture remain for twelve days, then strain, and bottle off for use, after adding one ounce of lavender drops.
A hot-pickle sandwich may be made with two thin, crisp slices of toast, with chopped West-Indian pickles in between. There are also many excellent sandwiches made for restorative purposes, by the nymphs who enliven the various Bodegas by their abilities and pretty prattle. And of those sandwiches commend me to the one labelled “Rajah.”
To make a
Devilled Biscuit
take a plain cheese-biscuit, heat it, but do not scorch it, in the oven. Then spread over it a paste composed of finely-powdered lobster worked up with butter, made mustard, ground ginger, cayenne, salt, Chili vinegar, and (if you can stand it) a little curry powder. Reheat the biscuit for a short time, and then deal with it.
But, after all, fresh air and exercise are the best of all restoratives; and most of the above recipes are adduced in the interest of the jaded Londoner, or the dweller in cities, to whom a ride, or a walk, save on Sundays and Bank holidays, {210} is a rarity. Get on your hack and gallop a dozen miles to covert. By the time you have mounted your first hunter, you will have forgotten all about the dog which may have bitten you on the previous night, and will also have forgotten a stern resolution made, whilst shying at your breakfast, never again to put whisky, however old, atop of claret. And by the time you have jumped three ox-fences, and a great yawning drain big enough and deep enough to bury the whole field, you will have recovered every bit of that “nerve” about which you had just a suspicion of a doubt, just before mounting your hack. God grant that nerve may be with you always!
CHAPTER XIX THE DRINKS OF DICKENS
The lesson taught by “Boz” — Clothing Christmas — Dickens’s drunkards — Fantastic names for ales — Robbing a boy of his beer — A school supper — Poor Traddles — Micawber and punch — Revelry at Pecksniff’s — Todgers’s “doing it” — Delights of the “Dragon” — Sairey Gamp’s requirements — What was in the teapot — The “Maypole” — Sydney Carton’s hopeless case — Stryver’s model — “Little D. is Deed nonsense” — Dear old Crummles — A magnum of the Double Diamond — Newman Noggs — Brandy before breakfast — Mr. Fagin’s pupils — Orange-peel and water — Quilp on fire — “Pass the rosy” — Harold Skimpole — Joey Bagstock — Brandy-and-tar-water — That ass Pumblechook — An inexhaustible bottle — Jaggers’s luncheon — Pickwick v. total abstinence — Everything an excuse for a dram — Brandy and oysters — “The inwariable” — Milk-punch — Charm of the Pickwick Papers.
Although it is the fashion of the day to belittle, if not sneer at, the works of “Boz,” he has still sufficient admirers to justify a chapter on what is, I hope, a congenial subject to my readers. The characters may be unduly elaborated, and the incidents too much spun-out for these slap-dash, go-ahead times; but it is to the simple, homely, hospitality so often referred to in the novels of Charles Dickens that most of them owed that popularity which may, or may {212} not, be on the wane. The close student of these novels will discover that all which is good, and honest, and upright, and charitable is honoured in their pages, whilst meanness, deceit, hypocrisy, and cant are lashed with no uncertain hand. “The greatest of all gifts is Charity,” is the lesson taught by Charles Dickens, who shewed at the same time that it is quite possible to enjoy the good things of life without making a beast of oneself. And he it was who clothed Christmas in that warm, sumptuous robe of joviality and hospitality which makes all who keep that festival in the proper spirit forget for the time that a quarter’s rent falls due on the same day.