"Well done, old fellow! Hurrah for Yale! Here is education for you!—a graduate of high standing who never even heard of bird's-nest soup. Why, Tom, you are all adrift, man. I learned more than that in the course of my college life, though I did graduate in the second term of Sophomore year. But I see how it was; classics, mathematics, and boating were all you studied, instead of taking to something useful."
"All right, Jack, I acknowledge your wisdom; only I wish it would enlighten my ignorance."
"So I will, Tom—so I will; but we will wait till evening, and do it at my lodgings, for I have some of the nests there, as well as the birds which build them, and you shall see for yourself. For the present we will do honor to Man Lok." Full honor was done to Man Lok, and evening found me in Jack's rooms.
"Now, Tom, if you will sit down and behave yourself properly, I will give you a practical lecture on ornithology viewed as a science which relates to soup. And that we may start right, I will show you in the first place the origin of the soup."
As he spoke, Jack opened a drawer, from which he took five or six stuffed skins of small dark-colored birds, and after them three curious-looking objects, which he gravely placed on the table before me by the side of the skins. These queer things were irregularly circular, rather broader than my hand, an inch and a half or two inches thick on one side, thinning out almost to an edge on the opposite side. The thickened side was flat, as though it had been formed against some hard substance, from which it had been subsequently torn away.
The one which Jack had placed nearest my hand was dark and dirty, had feathers and filth of all kinds mixed in with its upper surface, and as, like the others, it was sufficiently hollowed out above for such a purpose. I could easily see that it might have been a nest in which a brood of young birds had been hatched and reared. The one next to it was cleaner, free from feathers, and showed no signs of having been used as a nest; but it was of a dingy brown color, and looked generally dirty. The third, however, was really beautiful. It was clean, clear as though its fibres were of pure gelatine, and so brilliant that it looked almost white.
"What in the world are these things?"
"Soup," said Jack, with great gravity—"undeveloped soup."
"Do, for pity's sake, talk sense, Jack. Do you mean to tell me that I have been eating such stuff as this?" pointing to the one nearest me.
"Such are not my intentions. You dined, I think, at the establishment of my friend Man Lok, and that sort of article never comes under his hand. This light one is like what you caused to become part of you, and I believe that even your prejudiced appetite can not fail to admit that it was good. But come, Tom, let's commence with the birds, and we will take up the nests afterward. Look at this little fellow, now; dull-colored beggar, is not he? Do you recognize him? Or rather did you ever know any bird which he resembles?"