osegays, and all
sorts of uneatable decorations. I detest and abominate the idea of
a Siberian dinner, where you just look on fiddle-faddles, while your
dinner is behind a screen, and you are served with rations like a
pauper.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I quite agree with Mr. MacBorrowdale. I like to
see my dinner. And herein I rejoice to have Addison on my side; for I
remember a paper, in which he objects to having roast beef placed on a
sideboard. Even in his day it had been displaced to make way for some
incomprehensible French dishes, among which he could find nothing
to eat.{1} I do not know what he would have said to its being placed
altogether out of sight. Still there is something to be said on the
other side. There is hardly one gentleman in twenty who knows how to
carve; and as to ladies, though they did know once on a time, they do
not now. What can be more pitiable than the right-hand man of the lady
of the house, awkward enough in himself, with the dish twisted round
to him in the most awkward possible position, digging in unutterable
mortification for a joint which he cannot find, and wishing the
unanatomisable volaille behind a Russian screen with the footmen?

1 I was now in great hunger and confusion, when I thought I
smelled the agreeable savour of roast beef; but could not
tell from which dish it arose, though I did not question but
it lay disguised in one of them. Upon turning my head I saw
a noble sirloin on the side-table, smoking in the most
delicious manner. I bad recourse to it more than once, and
could not see without some indignation that substantial
English dish banished in so ignominious a manner, to make
way for French kickshaws.--Taller. No. 148.

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ I still like to see the _volaille_. It might be put
on table with its joints divided.

_Mr. Gryll._ As that turkey-poult is, Mr. MacBorrowdale; which gives
my niece no trouble; but the precaution is not necessary with such a
right-hand man as Lord Curryfin, who carves to perfection.

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Your arrangements are perfect. At the last of these
Siberian dinners at which I had the misfortune to be present, I
had offered me, for two of my rations, the tail of a mullet and the
drumstick of a fowl. Men who carve behind screens ought to pass a
competitive examination before a jury of gastronomers. Men who carve at
a table are drilled by degrees into something like tolerab