Surely you will not take offence if I assume, at this stage of the
game, that you are educated up to a point where you can appreciate the
delights that centre in a lamb salad. You dice the lamb, having it
free of all fat and sinew. Then put a layer of it in the bottom of the
salad bowl. Have a dressing of oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt, with a
bit of French mustard in it, at hand, and with this sprinkle the lamb.
Bestrew it, too, with a chopped anchovy or two, or more, if you are
fond of anchovies. Then put in a layer of cold boiled potatoes,
diced--more dressing; another stratum of lamb, and so on till the dish
is full, having it mound-shaped. Garnish with sliced gherkins and
capers, and let it go at that.
* * * * *
I would that fewer nursery rhymers had taken trips to market for their
text when their pens took to turning out jingles; for goodness knows
that what with "To market, to market to buy a fat pig," and "To
market, to market, all on a market day," keeping up a continuous
jig-like theme in my mind, to say nothing of the insistent
interruptions by the "little pig that went to market" I am well-nigh
distracted when I try to get dry-as-dust facts from the marketman
anent commonplace eatables. To be sure, if I go in search of frogs'
legs, say, and the story of the frog who went a-wooing recurs to my
mind three or four times in a minute, it seems quite appropriate and
doesn't interfere in the least with my driving a pretty sharp bargain
with the fish-dealer. But, so far as I know, no poet or writer of
assonance has taken it into his head to sing a song of livers,
kidneys, and such like edibles of which I am telling you herein, and
no wonder, you may say, if I don't succeed in making my story fairly
interesting, as well as appetizing--though from the nature of it if it
is one it must be the other.