is to have no appetite and not to care for the dainty
victuals placed before us, but we do not understand what it means to
sicken for food--to die for bread while others waste it--to gaze with
famished eyes upon coarse fare steaming behind dingy windows, longing
for a pen'orth of pea pudding and not having the penny to buy it--to
feel that a crust would be delicious and that a bone would be a banquet.

Hunger is a luxury to us, a piquant, flavor-giving sauce. It is well
worth while to get hungry and thirsty merely to discover how much
gratification can be obtained from eating and drinking. If you wish
to thoroughly enjoy your dinner, take a thirty-mile country walk after
breakfast and don't touch anything till you get back. How your eyes will
glisten at sight of the white table-cloth and steaming dishes then! With
what a sigh of content you will put down the empty beer tankard and take
up your knife and fork! And how comfortable you feel afterward as you
push back your chair, light a cigar, and beam round upon everybody.

Make sure, however, when adopting this plan, that the good dinner is
really to be had at the end, or the disappointment is trying. I remember
once a friend and I--dear old Joe, it was. Ah! how we lose one another
in life's mist. It must be eight years since I last saw Joseph Taboys.
How pleasant it would be to meet his jovial face again, to clasp his
strong hand, and to hear his cheery laugh once more! He owes me 14
shillings, too. Well, we were on a holiday together, and one morning
we had breakfast early and started for a tremendous long walk. We had
ordered a duck for dinner over night. We said, "Get a big one, because
we shall come home awfully hungry;" and as we were going out our
landlady came up in great spirits. She said, "I have got you gentlemen a
duck, if you like. If you get through that you'll do well;" and she held
up a bird about the size of a door-mat. We chuckled at the sight and
said we would try. We said it with self-conscious pride, like men who
know their own power. Then we started.

We lost our way, of course. I always do in the country, and it does make
me so wild, because it is no use asking direction of any of the people
you meet. One might as well inquire of a lodging-house slavey the way
to make beds as expect a country bumpkin to know the road to the next
village. You have to shout the question about three times before the
sound of your voice penetrates his skull. At the t