The bachelor and the chafing dish

“The fact of it is,” my friend went on, “men cook to please themselves and women cook to please others. After all, I think women prefer tea and toast. Now let me tell you how to make a Scotch woodcock : First toast and butter some bread on both sides, and spread on this some chopped anchovies. Beat up the yolks of four eggs with half a pint of cream, and thicken this for The Bachelor and the Chafing-dish. a few moments in your chafing-dish, without letting it come to a boil. Arrange your small pieces of toast into a little pyramid and pour this over it. Then you’ll want something else to eat afterward ! ” “"The Invalid's Tray" is worth talking about. I have a literary chum who got ill simply because he didn’t eat enough ! He had the funniest little “den” in town. It wasn’t -much more than ten feet square, and Harry slept there, wrote there, and had long chummy talks with me when we both ought to have been in bed hours ago. He would begin his day of work on a boiled egg, a cup of coffee, and a loaf of “ home made.” He would keep his larder in a soap box fastened on the ledge of the window outside, and respectfully called it his refrigerator. He paid about two dollars a week for his quarters, and laid other dollars by in the bank. During the day he would forget himself in his novelettes, verses, and “ pot boilers ” generally until it got too late to get lunch. He would dine around the corner at a dyspeptic table d'hote , and regale me afterwards with the astounding menu, including wine, for fifty cents ! He had the most wonderful system for his literary business. He could lay his hands on any subject as soon as he thought about it, by referring to the contents of a tin cigarette box, and he kept a lot of these little boxes, all duly labelled, in vari- 24 The Bachelor and the Chafing-dish. ous corners of the room. It used to cheer me up a great deal to have an old-fashioned talk with Harry. I would come away feeling that if I wanted to obtain the earth all I had to do was to think that it was perfectly possible. He gave me so many tips ! And he had such clever, original ideas ! If you’d go to him and tell him your painful story about unrequited love, it would seem the simplest thing imaginable, after you had laid it all before him and got his advice, to win the girl by simply turning your hand over, as it were. Every once in a while, when literary work began to be financially slow, Harry would accept some theatrical engagement. He was a first-rate actor of the Wyndham type, and had been brought up in the atmosphere of the greenroom. But he seemed singularly unambitious in that direction, and would only speak of it as “ going on simply to help matters.” On such occasions he would dine around like the veritable lord I had come to dub him. It was after one of these periods of extravagance that Harry “took ill.” After seriously diagnosing his case, I came to the conclusion that it was all because of his stomach. Then I insisted upon treating him as an invalid, and suggested certain things for him accordingly. The first really tempt- The Lord Harry .