"These, my love," said Mrs Feasible, who came in from a long walk, with her bonnet still on, "these are three shillings and sixpence a hundred; and these, which are a size larger, are four-and-sixpence. Which do you think we ought to have?"
"Why, really, my dear, when one sends out so many, I do not see why we should incur unnecessary expense. The three-and-sixpenny ones are quite large enough."
"And the engraving will be fourteen shillings."
"Well, that will only be a first expense. Conversazione in old English, of course."
"And here, my love, are the ribbons for the maids' caps and sashes; I bought them at Waterloo House, very cheap, and a very pretty candle-light colour."
"Did you speak to them about their gowns?"
"Yes, my love; Sally and Peggy have each a white gown, Betty I can lend one of my own."
The difference between a conversazione and a rout is simply this:—in the former you are expected to talk or listen, but to be too ethereal to eat. In the latter, to be squeezed in a crowd, and eat ices, &c., to cool yourselves. A conversazione has, therefore, a great advantage over the latter, as far as the pocket is concerned, it being much cheaper to procure food for the mind than food for the body. It would appear that tea has been as completely established the beverage of modern scientific men, as nectar was formerly that of the gods. The Athenæum gives tea; and I observed in a late newspaper, that Lord G—— has promised tea to the Geographical Society. Had his lordship been aware that there was a beverage invented on board ship much more appropriate to the science over which he presides than tea, I feel convinced he would have substituted it immediately; and I therefore take this opportunity of informing him that sailors have long made use of a compound which actually goes by the name of geo-graffy, which is only a trifling corruption of the name of the science, arising from their habit of laying the accent upon the penultimate. I will now give his lordship the receipt, which is most simple.
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 buscuit broken 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 buscuit, 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 buscuit floating in it the continents and islands which are washed by it.