THE NEW ALLIANCE The "Great Lexicographer"-- tutelary deity of my adopted habitat--has handed down to shuddering posterity a definition of the act of eating which might have been framed by a dyspeptic ghoul.

"Eat: to devour with the mouth." It is a shocking view to take of so genial a function: cynical, indelicate, and finally unforgivable by reason of its very accuracy.

For, after all, that is what eating amounts to, if one must needs express it with such crude brutality.

But if "the ingestion of alimentary substances"-- to ring a modern change upon the older formula--is in itself a process material even unto carnality, it is undeniable that it forms a highly agreeable accompaniment to more psychic manifestations.
And so, as the lamplight, re-enforced by accessory candles, falls on the little table in the first-floor room looking on Fetter Lane--only now the curtains are drawn--the conversation is not the less friendly and bright for a running accompaniment executed with knives and forks, for clink of goblet and jovial gurgle of wine-flask.

On the contrary, to one of us, at least--to wit, Godfrey Bellingham--the occasion is one of uncommon festivity, and his boyish enjoyment of the simple feast makes pathetic suggestions of hard times, faced uncomplainingly, but keenly felt nevertheless.
The talk flitted from topic to topic, mainly concerning itself with matters artistic, and never for one moment approaching the critical subject of John Bellingham's will.