And this frank admission ought to show that I am not your mere
twaddling laudator temporis acti--your old fogy who can see no good
except in his own time.
They say that claret is better now-a-days, and cookery much improved
since the days of MY monarch--of George IV. Pastry Cookery is certainly
not so good. I have often eaten half a crown's worth (including, I
trust, ginger-beer) at our school pastry-cook's, and that is a proof
that the pastry must have been very good, for could I do as much now? I
passed by the pastry-cook's shop lately, having occasion to visit my old
school. It looked a very dingy old baker's; misfortunes may have come
over him--those penny tarts certainly did NOT look so nice as I remember
them: but he may have grown careless as he has grown old (I should judge
him to be now about ninety-six years of age), and his hand may have lost
its cunning.
Not that we were not great epicures. I remember how we constantly
grumbled at the quantity of the food in our master's house--which on my
conscience I believe was excellent and plentiful--and how we tried once
or twice to eat him out of house and home. At the pastry-cook's we may
have over-eaten ourselves (I have admitted half a crown's worth for
my own part, but I don't like to mention the REAL figure for fear
of perverting the present generation of boys by my monstrous
confession)--we may have eaten too much, I say.
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