a pen'orth of nuts, half a dozen jumbles, and a bottle of ginger-beer.
After that they play at horses.

How they must despise us men, who require to sit quiet for a couple
of hours after dining off a spoonful of clear soup and the wing of a
chicken!

But the boys have not all the advantages on their side. A boy never
enjoys the luxury of being satisfied. A boy never feels full. He can
never stretch out his legs, put his hands behind his head, and, closing
his eyes, sink into the ethereal blissfulness that encompasses the
well-dined man. A dinner makes no difference whatever to a boy. To a
man it is as a good fairy's potion, and after it the world appears
a brighter and a better place. A man who has dined satisfactorily
experiences a yearning love toward all his fellow-creatures. He strokes
the cat quite gently and calls it "poor pussy," in tones full of the
tenderest emotion. He sympathizes with the members of the German band
outside and wonders if they are cold; and for the moment he does not
even hate his wife's relations.

A good dinner brings out all the softer side of a man. Under its genial
influence the gloomy and morose become jovial and chatty. Sour, starchy
individuals, who all the rest of the day go about looking as if they
lived on vinegar and Epsom salts, break out into wreathed smiles after
dinner, and exhibit a tendency to pat small children on the head and
to talk to them--vaguely--about sixpences. Serious men thaw and become
mildly cheerful, and snobbish young men of the heavy-mustache type
forget to make themselves objectionable.

I always feel sentimental myself after dinner. It is the only time when
I can properly appreciate love-stories. Then, when the hero clasps "her"
to his heart in one last wild embrace and stifles a sob, I feel as sad
as though I had dealt at whist and turned up only a deuce; and when the
heroine dies in the end I weep. If I read the same tale early in the
morning I should sneer at it. Digestion, or rather indigestion, has
a marvelous effect upon the heart. If I want to write any thing very
pathetic--I mean, if I want to try to write anything very pathetic--I
eat a large plateful of hot buttered muffins about an hour beforehand,
and then by the time I sit down to my work a feeling of unutterable
melancholy has come over me. I picture heartbroken lovers parting
forever at lonely wayside stiles, while the sad twilight deepens
around them, and only the tinkling of a distant s