cauliflowers and rice-pudding; so can man! but an elephant can't eat a
beefsteak; man can. In sum, man can live everywhere, because he can
eat anything, thanks to his dental formation!" concluded Kenelm,
making a prodigious stride towards the boy. "Man, when everything
else fails him, eats his own species."

"Don't; you frighten me," said the boy. "Aha!" clapping his hands
with a sensation of gleeful relief, "here come the mutton-chops!"

A wonderfully clean, well-washed, indeed well-washed-out, middle-aged
parlour-maid now appeared, dish in hand. Putting the dish on the
table and taking off the cover, the handmaiden said civilly, though
frigidly, like one who lived upon salad and cold water, "Mistress is
sorry to have kept you waiting, but she thought you were Vegetarians."

After helping his young friend to a mutton-chop, Kenelm helped
himself, and replied gravely, "Tell your mistress that if she had only
given us vegetables, I should have eaten you. Tell her that though
man is partially graminivorous, he is principally carnivorous. Tell
her that though a swine eats cabbages and such like, yet where a swine
can get a baby, it eats the baby. Tell her," continued Kenelm (now at
his third chop), "that there is no animal that in digestive organs
more resembles man than a swine. Ask her if there is any baby in the
house; if so, it would be safe for the baby to send up some more
chops."

As the acutest observer could rarely be quite sure when Kenelm
Chillingly was in jest or in earnest, the parlour-maid paused a moment
and attempted a pale smile. Kenelm lifted his dark eyes, unspeakably
sad and profound, and said mournfully, "I should be so sorry for the