is voracious paunch. A story is told of his father, who is said to have
kept a very scanty table, that dining one Saturday with

3 In 1762, says Evelyn in his Diary, "one Richardson,
amongst other feats, performed the following: taking a live
coal on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster; the coal was
blown on with a bellows, till it flamed in his mouth, and so
remained till the oyster gaped, and was quite boiled."
Certainly the most simple of all cooking apparatus.

~100~~his son at an ordinary in Cambridge, he whispered in his ear,
"Tom, you must eat for to-day and to-morrow." "O yes," retorted the
half-starved lad, "but I han't eaten for yesterday, and the day before
yet, father." In short, Tom makes but one hearty meal in a week, and
that one might serve a troop of infantry to digest. The squalling of an
infant at the lower end of the room, whose papa was vainly endeavouring
to pacify the young gourmand with huge spoonfuls of mock-turtle, drew
forth an observation from the alderman, that had well nigh disturbed the
entire arrangement of the table, and broke up the harmony of the scene
"with most admired disorder;" for on the head of the Marigold family
likening the youngster's noise to a chamber organ, and quaintly
observing that they always had music during dinner at Fishmongers' Hall,
the lady mother of the infant, a jolly dame, who happened to be engaged
in the shell fish line, took the allusion immediately to herself, and
commenced such a furious attack upon the alderman as proved her having
been regularly matriculated at the college in Thames Street.

When the storm subsided the ladies had vanished, and the alderman moved
an adjournment to what he termed the _snuggery_, a pleasant little
room on the first floor, which commanded a delightful prospect over the
adjacent country. Here we were joined by three eccentric friends of the
Marigold family, who came on the special invitation of the alderman,
Mr. Peter Pendragon, a celebrated city punster, Mr. Philotus Wantley,
a vegetable dieter, and Mr. Galen Cornaro, an abominator of wine, and a
dyspeptic follower of Kitchener and Abernethy--a trio of singularities
that would afford excellent materials for my friend Richard Peake, the
dramatist, in mixing up a new _monopolylogue_ for that facetious child
of whim and wit, the inimitable Charles Mathews. Our first story, while
the wine was decantering, proceeded from the ~101~~alderman, who h