altogether-to-be-repudiated den, where the meat would be rags as well
as the pudding. But under his guidance we invariably turned up in
some clean, bright, cheap and wholesome "oysterbar" or coffee room
round the corner or up a lane, and were as happy as kings over our
_lager beer_.
One day De Kock came to me (he is a grand-nephew or something, I
believe, of the great Frenchman) and said, with his knowing air,
"You will please put on your best coat, your tall hat and a pair of
gloves, for we are going to _dine_ to-night."
"Have we not dined once to-day!"
"Pish! Pshaw! You have had a soup, a mutton-chop, a triangle of pie,
a lager beer, but you have not dined. You are not starving, and yet
you have, from my present point of view, eaten nothing the whole of
this day. _Mon cher_, it is necessary that you should dine for once
in your life. _Allons_! We go to Giuseppe, Giuseppe Martinetti with
the pale wife and the pea-green parrot--_allons, allons_!" To
Martinetti's accordingly we went. I don't know what the dinner cost.
It was dearer, certainly, than it would have been in London, but it
was quite as good. We sat at a table formed for holding four at an
open window, which, filled with exotics, overlooked Union Square,
lighted by hundreds of incandescent lamps. The room contained about
twenty of these small tables, and was, I suppose, very much like
other rooms of its kind to _habitues_ of such places, but it was all
new to me, and I stared and wondered accordingly. The waiters seemed
to be all foreigners, De Kock addressing them in a mythical but
magical language of his own. The tables were all full, and the
people at them were mostly foreigners as well.
"The Leicester Square of New York," remarked De Kock, as he helped
me to the delicious Chiante wine out of a basket-covered bottle into
a dainty glass. The soup was excellent, I remember. So was the
macaroni, served in the best Italian method. I wondered to see De
Kock manipulate it in finished style, winding yards of it around his
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