Englishmen fall into two classes as regards their diet; those that take a small lunch and their chief meal in the evening, and those who make the midday meal the chief and take a small supper before retiring.
Social position is the chief agent which determines to which class an individual belongs. The working classes usually dine in the middle of the day, and the professional and upper classes dine in the evening.
We will continue our remarks on the diet of the richer classes, not because it is better or more suitable than the plainer diet of the working classes, but because the rich naturally keep a more varied table, and so will give us more material to criticise.
Luncheon is a desultory sort of meal, and though most people eat something, many do so only because they think that it is the thing to do, and not because they are really hungry.
If you will accompany us, we will go to see the luncheon given by Lord X. at his Surrey home. But we cannot go as guests, for not only have we not been invited, but we are going to criticise many things about the table and the meal. We must, therefore, remain invisible and inaudible, for it is unpardonable to make remarks at the table, even if those remarks would save a whole company from indigestion and a sleepless night.
Before the meal is served, our eyes are offended by something on the sideboard which is sufficient to destroy the appetite of any extra delicately-minded person if she only knew its secrets.
The object is nothing less than a cold pheasant pie ornamented by the head or feathers of the bird whose flesh the pie is supposed to contain. We want you to examine that ornament, and we feel pretty certain that if you do, you will never again eat meat pies.
In order that the carcases of dead animals should not encumber the earth, it has been ordained that when an animal dies, its body rapidly decomposes and becomes dissolved into simple gases. The agents that bring about the dissolution of the body are various. The chief agents which cause the decomposition of organic matter are microbes. The majority of these do not produce diseases in man, but some of them do, and some of these you might find on that pheasant pie if you could see it through a microscope.