“Oh! I've had enough of hospitality, believe me; and so had Gulliver, in the arms of the Brobdignag monkey, who ran away with him, and poked pounds of nauseous chewed food out of its own jaws into his; people are sometimes offensively, cruelly hospitable. Here, now, for instance, was I taken yesterday, by my brother, for a treat—mark me—to dine with one Jehoshaphat Higgs—”
“Almost the sole remaining specimen,” interrupted Sir Waldron, “of the fine, old-English, West-country yeomen;—a race, alas! now nearly extinct I honour the man: he farms his own land; sends his sons to the plough; his daughters to the spinning-wheel, and his wife to the chum. He keeps up all the good old customs of the country; raises the mistletoe on his beam at Christmas, and dances round the May-pole, with his buxom dame, at seventy, as gay at heart, though not as light of limb, as he did at twenty: I repeat, that I honour such men.”
“Honour them as much as you please, Waldron,” replied Archibald; “honour them, and welcome; but, I beseech you, do not entrap me to honour another of them,—if, indeed, there be such another blade as old Jehoshaphat, hereabouts,—with any more visits. First, brother Reginald, conceive the misery, if you can, of dining in a room, falsely designated a parlour, with a sanded floor! My teeth were set on edge every time I moved a foot.”
“Ay, but, brother, provided the table be well covered,” observed Reginald, “one might, methinks, even put up with a clean, dry, sanded floor.”
“Ay, ay, keep him to that, Reginald,” said Sir Waldron; “the table was, indeed, well covered. I have not dined so well these three weeks. We had a full course of downright thoroughbred old-English dishes;—Devonshire dainties of the first water; such as that transcendant lyrist, Robert Herrick, himself, when he dwelt in this country, doubtless, occasionally feasted on; compared with which, your modern kickshaws, your town messes, and hashes, and fricassees, and starved turtle, brother Archibald, are as chaff, compared with its own grain. You shall judge, Reginald: among other things, there was a remarkably fine-flavoured muggot-pie;—a dish, of which, I find, by an old manuscript, in our library, that the talented and virtuous Raleigh, was remarkably fond, and moreover partook, three days previously to his execution.”
“In my opinion,” said Archibald, “a man who would be fool enough to prefer muggot-pie to—”
“It's fine eating, Archibald,” quoth Sir Waldron; “would that you had tasted it!—and Sir Walter was a great man;—fine eating, on the honour of a gentleman.”
“What! calves' tripe baked in a pie, fine eating!” said Archibald; “if this be the result of your dwelling in Devonshire—”
“I never was out of it but thrice in my life,” said Sir Waldron; “and each time I had cause to repent of my folly.—But, to waive the muggot—had we not, also, parsley-pie?—”
“Made, as its name implies, of the herb that's used for garnish!”