CLUBS AND COFF.EEHOUSES. 14 0 To which, if the party
thought the avoidance of insult worth sixpence, was to be added, Waiter 1 6 15 6
Who that remembers these things can join in the clamour of black-balled gentlemen and ancient maids against clubs?
Mai r au sus. wevrat aXyai ;
or anchovy, which will not pour ; and cayenne, whose heat has paled, while the grains have consolidated. Two or three long kid- ney potatoes (1- ream, and thoroughly saturated with the simple element in which they were boiled. To follow, according to custom, the slice of a cow's hide, by courtesy styled a steak, tough and black, but set off with lumps of yellow fat, the sight whereof would distress an Esquimaux. Add to this, a substance resembling mixed lampblack and grease for gravy. After the struggle with the steak, if the guest had a tooth left in his head, he perhaps was mad enough to order a tart ; which was composed of the third of an apple cut into slices, keeping shape perfectly, and defying the operation of baking by a vigorous constitutional crudity—covered with a pale dry crust, ready to part from the dish at the slightest instance, as weary of the stale connexion. Next, a cheese, more biting than bitten, which had felt warmth, and whose oozings were beautifully glazed and delicately powdered with dust. To these delicacies add the menstruum of a pint of a hot and distasteful compound, drunk only because it was put in a decanter and to be paid for ; and lastly, that enormity of enormities, THE BILL. s. d.
Cod and Oyster Sauce • • 3 6 Rump Steak and ditto 3 6 Potatoes 1 0 Bread and Beer 1 0 Tart 1 6
Pint of Old Port 3 6 A MoiNued Paper has given insertion to some silly letters com- plaining of Clubs. The public have about as much right to en- tertain complaints respecting the economy of an individual's household, as of the system of clubs. If two persons associate for economy, who has a right to complain? or if ten, or a thou- sand? It is urged that men in clubs dispense with establishments they would otherwise keep up ; but where is the damage ? The money saved in one department is expended or employed in ano- ther. Clubs certainly have the effect of injuring the coffeehouses and taverns ; and when we remember the moderation of their charges before the club wra, and the excellence of their entertain- ment, the civility of waiters, and the humility of their expectations of reward for such watchful attendance, and above all, the peremptory necessity of swallowing a certain portion (notgiven) of poison, or at least of disbursing its high price,—should we grieve at the injury which clubs have done to the meritorious vintners of this metro- polis ? "A coffeehouse dinner ! "—oh what a sum of suffering is represented in the term! Who has forgotten the slice of watery cod, apparently boiled in the weeds which serve for garniture ; with a large boat of bookbinders' paste in which crude oysters were stuck? For condiment, soy with flies in it, bearing out the pro- phecy of Hector,
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