Page:Under the Sun.djvu/314

290 agility and suitable, therefore, to be a easy prey. Being himself of aldermanic proportions, he was averse to arduous exercise; so he surveyed the turtle, pleased. Anon he grew hungry, and hunger arousing him to comparative activity, he circumvented the unsuspecting turtle, that is to say, he got between it and the water, and soon made a prisoner of the slowly moving thing. Examination increased his satisfaction, for he found the turtle carried its own soup tureen on its back, and there and then, gathering in his simple way a few sticks from the adjoining brake, this primeval alderman enjoyed the delights of green- fat soup, — calling it, in his barbarous but expressive dialect, callipee, and the outer integuments of more solid meat which he found upon the stomach, callipash. So ever afterwards when he felt hungry, and too lazy to pick acorns, he circumvented a turtle.

Since then, of course, many years have past. Aldermen now wear clothes, and need not go about catching their meals, and the umbrageous swamps of a tertiary Britain are now the site of the city of London; but the old instinct, as we perceive, still survives, and the hungry alderman always calls for turtle.

Nor could the civic magnate do better. Some viands that have long been traditional for their excellence have ceased to be paraded on high days, and, to omit the more recondite, I need only cite the, swan, once the dish of honor at every public feast; the hog barbecued; the ox roasted whole; the peacock garnished with his tail and russet pippins; the sturgeon and the stuffed pike; the bedizened boar’s head. Each had conspicuous merits, and there are still those who maintain that the new meats cannot compare with the old. Let this