Take a tin-pot, go to the scuttle-butt (having obtained permission from the quarter-deck), and draw off about half a pint of very offensive smelling water. To this add a gill of vinegar and a ship’s biscuit broke up into small pieces. Stir it well up with the fore-finger; and then with the fore-finger and thumb you may pull out the pieces of biscuit, and eat them as fast as you please, drinking the liquor to wash all down.
Now this would be the very composition to hand round to the Geographical Society. It is not christened geography without a reason; the vinegar and water representing the green sea, and the pieces of biscuit floating in it, the continents and islands which are washed by it.
Now, my lord, do not you thank me for my communication?
But we must return to the conversazione of Doctor and Mrs Feasible.
The company arrived. There was rap after rap. The whole street was astonished with the noise of the wheels and the rattling of the iron steps of the hackney-coaches. Doctor Feasible had procured some portfolios of prints: some Indian idols from a shop in Wardour Street, duly labelled and christened, and several other odds and ends, to create matter of conversation. The company consisted of several medical gentlemen and their wives, the great Mr B—, and the facetious Mr C—. There were ten or twelve authors, or gentlemen suspected of authorship, fourteen or fifteen chemists, all scientific of course, one colonel, half-a-dozen captains, and, to crown all, a city knight and his lady, besides their general acquaintance, unscientific and unprofessional. For a beginning this was very well; and the company departed very hungry, but highly delighted with their evening’s entertainment.
“What can all that noise be about?” said Mrs Plausible to her husband, who was sitting with her in the drawing-room, reading the Lancet, while she knotted, or did not.
“I am sure I cannot tell, Mrs Plausible.”
“There, again! I’m sure if I have heard one, I have heard thirty raps at a door within this quarter of an hour. I’m determined I will know what it is,” continued Mrs Plausible, getting up and ringing the bell.
“Thomas, do you know what all that noise is about?” said Mrs Plausible, when the servant answered the bell.
“No, ma’am, I doesn’t.”