On signal one of them would come promptly to
you where you sat, he shoving ahead of him a great trencher on
wheels, with a spirit lamp blazing beneath the platter to keep its
delectable burden properly hot. It might be that he brought to you a
noble haunch of venison or a splendid roast of pork or a vast leg of
boiled mutton; or, more likely yet, a huge joint of beef uprearing
like a delectable island from a sea of bubbling gravy, with an edging
of mashed potatoes creaming up upon its outer reefs.
If, then, you enriched this person with a shilling, or even if you
didn't, he would take in his brawny right hand a knife with a blade a
foot long, and with this knife he would cut off from the joint a slice
about the size and general dimensions of a horseshoer's apron. And if
you cared for a second slice, after finishing the first one, the
carver felt complimented and there was no extra charge for it. It was
his delight to minister to you.
But, alas, on this day when I came with my appetite whetted by my sea
voyage, and with an additional edge put upon it by the privations I
had undergone since landing, there was to be had no beef at all! Of a
sudden this establishment, lacking its roast beef, became to me as the
tragedy of Hamlet, the melancholy Dane, would be with Hamlet and
Ophelia and her pa and the ghost and the wicked queen, and both the
gravediggers, all left out.
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