fry two fish. What Barmecide justice have I done to the noble
feasts wherein the set of wooden platters figured, each with its own
peculiar delicacy, as a ham or turkey, glued tight on to it, and
garnished with something green, which I recollect as moss! Could
all the Temperance Societies of these later days, united, give me
such a tea-drinking as I have had through the means of yonder little
set of blue crockery, which really would hold liquid (it ran out of
the small wooden cask, I recollect, and tasted of matches), and
which made tea, nectar. And if the two legs of the ineffectual
little sugar-tongs did tumble over one another, and want purpose,
like Punch's hands, what does it matter? And if I did once shriek
out, as a poisoned child, and strike the fashionable company with
consternation, by reason of having drunk a little teaspoon,
inadvertently dissolved in too hot tea, I was never the worse for
it, except by a powder!

Upon the next branches of the tree, lower down, hard by the green
roller and miniature gardening-tools, how thick the books begin to
hang. Thin books, in themselves, at first, but many of them, and
with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green. What fat
black letters to begin with! "A was an archer, and shot at a frog."
Of course he was. He was an apple-pie also, and there he is! He
was a good many things in his time, was A, and so were most of his
friends, except X, who had so little versatility, that I never knew
him to get beyond Xerxes or Xantippe--like Y, who was always
confined to a Yacht or a Yew Tree; and Z condemned for ever to be a
Zebra or a Zany. But, now, the very tree itself changes, and
becomes a bean-stalk--the marvellous bean-stalk up which Jack
climbed to the Giant's house! And now, those dreadfully
interesting, double-headed giants, with their clubs over their