Mr. Punchinello:--One of the balloon reporters from Paris says:
"Great care is taken to save food from waste. There is much horse-flesh
eaten."
For a Frenchman in a state of siege horse-flesh is all right--the French
eat frogs, you know, and horses have frogs in their feet. What I like
about the thing in Paris, though, is that they _call_ it horse-flesh,
and don't try to jerk it on a fellow for beef. Jerked beef is bad
enough, but only think of jerked horse, by Jove, you know!
Now I want to say that here in New York, not being in a state of siege,
we are eating a lot more horse-flesh than we know of, all the same--but
they call it beef.
Look here, now.
I take my grub, sometimes (only for the sake of seeing life, you know),
at a decent sort of a place enough, to which butchers resort. There is a
man always to be seen there at grub time, a cockish-looking fellow,
somewhat, with a horse-shoe pin in his scarf, and he is as thick as
thieves with the butchers. Yesterday, for the first time, I got an
inkling of who and what he is. I saw him performing an operation upon a
horse, in the yard of a livery stable. He is a VETERINARY SURGEON! He
consorts with BUTCHERS! Put that and that together, Mr. PUNCHINELLO, and
see what you can make of it. And the duffer always eats mutton, too, or
fish. I never yet heard him call for beef. He knows all about nag, and
likes it alive, but he is not to be nagged into eating it. Neigh! neigh!
Yours, irascibly,