"Pray, how do you dress an animal of that description?"

"Roast and stuff him, Sir, and serve him up with currant jelly."

"What! like a hare?"

"It is a hare, Sir."

"What!"

"Yes, Sir, it is a hare! [Note: I have since learned, that this custom of
calling a hare a lion is not peculiar to Cheltenham. At that time I was
utterly unacquainted with the regulations of the London coffee-houses.]--
but we call it a lion, because of the Game Laws."

'Bright discovery,' thought I; 'they have a new language in Cheltenham:
nothing's like travelling to enlarge the mind.' "And the birds," said I,
aloud, "are neither humming birds, nor ostriches, I suppose?"

"No, Sir; they are partridges."

"Well, then, give me some soup; a cotelette de mouton, and a 'bird,' as
you term it, and be quick about it."

"It shall be done with dispatch," answered the pompous attendant, and
withdrew.

Is there, in the whole course of this pleasant and varying life, which
young gentlemen and ladies write verses to prove same and sorrowful,--is
there, in the whole course of it, one half-hour really and genuinely