d dish is one which Sciolists are perpetually calling
_filet a la Chateaubriand_, saddling the poetic defender of
Christianity with an invention in cookery of which he was never
capable. I approved the new-comer, who was writing half a dozen notes
with his mouth full, for his nicety in nomenclature: to get the right
term, even in kitchen affairs, shows a reflective mind and tenderness
of conscience. My friend the engineer arrived, and placed himself in
the chair I had turned up beside my own. I was ashamed of the rate at
which I advanced through my capon, but I recollected that Anne Boleyn,
when she was a maid of honor, used to breakfast off a gallon of ale
and a chine of beef.

My canal-maker interrupted me with a sudden appeal. "Listen--listen
yonder," he said, jogging my knee, "it is very amusing. He is in a
high vein to-day."

The gray coat, who had already directed four or five letters, and was
cleaning his middle finger with a lemon over the glass bowl, had just
opened a lofty geographical discussion with the bluebottle. I cannot
express how eagerly I, as a theorist of some pretension in Comparative
Geography, awoke to a discussion in which my dearest opinions were
concerned.

"Geography," the active gentleman was saying as he dipped his finger
in water to attach the flaps of his envelopes--"geography, my dear
professor, is the most neglected of modern sciences. Excuse me if I
take from under you, for a moment, your doctoral chair, and land you
on one of the forms of the primary department. I would ask a simple
elementary question: How many parts of the globe are there?"

"Before the loss of Alsace and Lorraine," said the professor with
plaintive humor, "I always reckoned six."

"Very well: on this point we agree."

"Six!" said the Scotchman in great surprise. "You are liberal: I make
but five."

"Not one less than six," said the patriot, vastly encouraged with the
support he got: "am I not right, sir? We have, first, Europe--"

"Ah, professor," said the silver-gray, interrupting him, "how is this?
You, such a distinguished scholar--you still believe in Europe? Why,
my dear sir, Europe no longer exists--certainly not as a quarter
of the globe. It is simply, as Humboldt very truly remarks in his
_Cosmos_, the septentrional point of Asia."

The surprise seemed to pass, at this point, from the face of the
Scot to that of the Strasburger. After reflecting a moment, "Really,"
murmured he, "I recollect, in _