'il n'y a qu'un diner.'"

"You speak like an oracle--like the Cook's Oracle, Mr. Pelham: may I send
you some soup, it is a la Carmelite? But what are you about to do with
that case?"

"It contains" (said I) "my spoon, my knife, and my fork. Nature afflicted
me with a propensity, which through these machines I have endeavoured to
remedy by art. I eat with too great a rapidity. It is a most unhappy
failing, for one often hurries over in one minute, what ought to have
afforded the fullest delight for the period of five. It is, indeed, a
vice which deadens enjoyment, as well as abbreviates it; it is a shameful
waste of the gifts, and a melancholy perversion of the bounty of
Providence: my conscience tormented me; but the habit, fatally indulged
in early childhood, was not easy to overcome. At last I resolved to
construct a spoon of peculiarly shallow dimensions, a fork so small, that
it could only raise a certain portion to my mouth, and a knife rendered
blunt and jagged, so that it required a proper and just time to carve the
goods 'the gods provide me.' My lord, 'the lovely Thais sits beside me'
in the form of a bottle of Madeira. Suffer me to take wine with you?"

"With pleasure, my good friend; let us drink to the memory of the
Carmelites, to whom we are indebted for this inimitable soup."

"Yes!" I cried. "Let us for once shake off the prejudices of sectarian
faith, and do justice to one order of those incomparable men, who,
retiring from the cares of an idle and sinful world, gave themselves with
undivided zeal and attention to the theory and practice of the profound
science of gastronomy. It is reserved for us, my lord, to pay a gratefu
tribute of memory to those exalted recluses, who, through a long period