depends upon the cooking. I never see a youngster hanging up in the
refrigerator, as one may put it, but I says to myself: 'Now I wonder what
the cook is going to make of you! Will you be minced and devilled and
fricasseed till you are all sauce and no meat? Will you be hammered
tender and grilled over a slow fire till you are a blessing to mankind?
Or will you be spoilt in the boiling, and come out a stringy rag, an
immediate curse, and a permanent injury to those who have got to swallow
you?'

"There was a youngster I knew in my old coffee-shop days," continued
Henry, "that in the end came to be eaten by cannibals. At least, so the
newspapers said. Speaking for myself, I never believed the report: he
wasn't that sort. If anybody was eaten, it was more likely the cannibal.
But that is neither here nor there. What I am thinking of is what
happened before he and the cannibals ever got nigh to one another. He
was fourteen when I first set eyes on him--Mile End fourteen, that is;
which is the same, I take it, as City eighteen and West End
five-and-twenty--and he was smart for his age into the bargain: a trifle
too smart as a matter of fact. He always came into the shop at the same
time--half-past two; he always sat in the seat next the window; and three
days out of six, he would order the same dinner: a fourpenny beef-steak
pudding--we called it beef-steak, and, for all practical purposes, it was
beef-steak--a penny plate of potatoes, and a penny slice of roly-poly
pudding--'chest expander' was the name our customers gave it--to follow.
That showed sense, I always thought, that dinner alone; a more satisfying
menu, at the price, I defy any human being to work out. He always had a
book with him, and he generally read during his meal; which is not a bad
plan if you don't want to think too much about what you are eating. There
was a seedy chap, I remember, used to dine at a cheap restaurant where I
once served, just off the Euston Road. He would stick a book up in front