with pulpy potatoes and stringy cabbage.  The very joint—­ribs or sirloin, leg or shoulder—­is commonly a poor, underfed, sapless thing, scorched in an oven; and as for the round of beef, it has as good as disappeared—­probably because it asks too much skill in the salting.  Then again one’s breakfast bacon; what intolerable stuff, smelling of saltpetre, has been set before me when I paid the price of the best smoked Wiltshire!  It would be mere indulgence of the spirit of grumbling to talk about poisonous tea and washy coffee; every one knows that these drinks cannot be had at public tables; but what if there be real reason for discontent with one’s pint of ale?  Often, still, that draught from the local brewery is sound and invigorating, but there are grievous exceptions, and no doubt the tendency is here, as in other things—­a falling off, a carelessness, if not a calculating dishonesty.  I foresee the day when Englishmen will have forgotten how to brew beer; when one’s only safety will lie in the draught imported from Munich.

XVII.

I was taking a meal once at a London restaurant—­not one of the great eating-places to which men most resort, but a small establishment on the same model in a quiet neighbourhood—­when there entered, and sat down at the next table, a young man of the working class, whose dress betokened holiday.  A glance told me that he felt anything but at ease; his mind misgave him as he looked about the long room and at the table before him; and when a waiter came to offer him the card, he stared blankly in sheepish confusion.  Some strange windfall, no doubt, had emboldened him to enter for the first time such a place as this, and now that he was here, he heartily wished himself out in the street again.  However, aided by the waiter’s suggestions, he gave an order for a beef-steak and vegetables.  When the dish was served, the poor fellow simply could not make a start upon it; he was embarrassed by the display of knives and forks, by the arrangement of the dishes, by the sauce bottles and the cruet-stand, above all, no doubt, by the assembly of people not of his class, and the unwonted experience of being waited upon by a man with a long shirt-front.  He grew red; he made the clumsiest and most futile efforts to transport the meat to his plate; food was there before him, but, like a very Tantalus, he was forbidden to enjoy it.  Observing with all discretion, I at length saw him pull out his pocket handkerchief, spread it on the table, and, with a sudden effort, fork the meat off the dish into this receptacle.  The waiter, aware by this time of the customer’s difficulty, came up and spoke a word to him.  Abashed into anger, the young man roughly asked what he had to pay.  It ended in the waiter’s bringing a newspaper, wherein he helped to wrap up meat and vegetables.  Money was flung down, and the victim of a mistaken ambition hurriedly departed, to satisfy his hunger amid less unfamiliar surroundings.