s,
and can vouch for the fact that the dinners there are of excellent
quality)--in the serious world, in the great mercantile world, among the
legal community (notorious feeders), in every house in town (except some
half-dozen which can afford to do without such aid), the man I propose
might speedily render himself indispensable.

Does the reader now begin to take? Have I hinted enough for him that
he may see with eagle glance the immense beauty of the profession I am
about to unfold to him? We have all seen Gunter and Chevet; Fregoso, on
the Puerta del Sol (a relation of the ex-Minister Calomarde), is a good
purveyor enough for the benighted olla-eaters of Madrid; nor have I any
fault to find with Guimard, a Frenchman, who has lately set up in the
Toledo, at Naples, where he furnishes people with decent food. It has
given me pleasure, too, in walking about London--in the Strand,
in Oxford Street, and elsewhere, to see fournisseurs and
comestible-merchants newly set up. Messrs. Morel have excellent articles
in their warehouses; Fortnum and Mason are known to most of my readers.

But what is not known, what is wanted, what is languished for in England
is a DINNER-MASTER,--a gentleman who is not a provider of meat or wine,
like the parties before named, who can have no earthly interest in
the price of truffled turkeys or dry champagne beyond that legitimate
interest which he may feel for his client, and which leads him to see
that the latter is not cheated by his tradesmen. For the dinner-giver is
almost naturally an ignorant man. How in mercy's name can Mr. Serjeant
Snorter, who is all day at Westminster, or in chambers, know possibly
the mysteries, the delicacy, of dinner-giving? How can Alderman Pogson
know anything beyond the fact that venison is good with currant jelly,
and that he likes lots of green fat with his turtle? Snorter knows
law, Pogson is acquainted with the state of the tallow-market; but what
should he know of eating, like you and me, who have given up our time
to it? (I say ME only familiarly, for I have only reached so far in
the science as to know that I know nothing.) But men there are, gifted
individuals, who have spent years of deep thought--not merely
intervals of labor, but hours of study every day--over the gormandizing
science,--who, like alchemists, have let their fortunes go, guinea by
guinea, into the all-devouring pot,--who, ruined as they sometimes are,
never get a guinea by chance but t