I will not trouble you with a detail of the first symptoms I observed, nor a description of the many outrageous blunders he committed under the influence of this worst of all ‘ideas’ but one—and here it is:—
It was on a Thursday: I had ordered a beef-steak for dinner. You know it is my favourite dish, and that I am particular to have it dressed to a turn. I had taught Jimmy the art; but warned by late failures and mistakes, I called in one of the neighbours’ wives to have an eye to Jimmy while dressing dinner. Well, at the hour appointed the dinner smoked on the table sure enough, and, tucking a napkin under my chin, I sat down ‘richly to enjoy;’ when lo! a loud scream, or rather yell, from the kitchen, startled me, and the next instant in rushed Mrs Flanagan, with outstretched arms, apparently panic-stricken.
‘Oh, holy Mary! did you ait any ov it yet, sir?’ she asked in breathless haste.
‘Eat what?’ demanded I, surprised.
‘That thing in the dish,’ screamed she.
‘No,’ said I gruffly, and angry at the unseasonable interruption.
‘Nor never shall, plaise God,’ exclaimed she, striding over, and advancing her profane hands to seize the dish, whilst I, holding it with one hand, motioned her off with the other, as I angrily desired her to leave the room, and leave me to my meal in peace.
‘Never, by the hob!’ exclaimed the determined vixen; ‘I’ll never quit till I get that thing in the dish; and here I’ll stay’—and there she staid in audacious determination. My mind began to misgive me that there was something the matter with what I was so pertinaciously defending; so I raised the cover of the dish. There lay a substance black as the ace of spades. ‘So, so!’ I began, ‘here is a fine morsel for a hungry man!—here’s frying with a vengeance! Woman, woman!’ cried I solemnly, and turning to my obtrusive companion with the dignity of a man who had received a mortal affront, but who yet hail some feeling of God-like charity—‘Woman, woman! is there never to be any dependence on your sex? I am wasted to a thread; I am worked to a skeleton; and I think this carcase hath need of a little indulgence on one day out of seven. I pay sixpence a pound for a tender, delicate rump-steak, and I call you in to superintend the dressing of it, decidedly telling you to have it done the colour of your own skin, and no darker (dark enough in all conscience). But here it is now—neither Bedford-brown, Vandyke-brown, Adelaide-brown, nor Flanagan-brown, but a sapless, fatless, cinder black! Nevertheless, such is my resignation under all trials, I shall endeavour to make a meal of it, if possible: do you but leave me in peace—vanish!’ and I muttered some words in Latin, and gave two or three figurative flourishes with my hands, by way of letting her think I was performing some important ceremony of the church, at which her absence would be necessary. But she stuck fast.
‘Why, thin, indeed, sur,’ she persisted, ‘if you war to praich Latin an’ Greek from this till mornin’, you’ll never convart an ould black wisted stockin’ into a beef-staik!’
‘A what, woman, in the name of heaven!’