Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

cabby; “but if you’re not going far, I think I shall have plenty of time to take you.” “Do so, my man; I live close by, in Bloomsbury-street, Bedford-square. Here’s a shilling for you--go ahead, cabby.” Pst! pst! and off we were. In a few minutes, thanks to the evaporation of the thick fog and its having left only a feeble skeleton of its former substance, I found myself at my street door, and was trying for some time to open it with the wrong key, all the while thinking to myself what an extraordinary and uncomfortable evening I had passed to return so late. Perceiving my mistake, I changed the key; opening and shutting the door violently, I rushed up stairs with the intention of booking that evening in my daily tablet as one of the most tedious and uncomfortable I had spent throughout the series of cheerful years granted to me by a Supreme Power. The fire was out, the supper divided between my two friends the Angola cats, the servants in bed, the gas turned off, and the lucifers, I believe, gone to their Mephistophelian domain. CHAPTER I. BY RAIL AND COACH TO VIRGINIA WATER. An early visit--Virginia Water--An eccentric friend--Rail _v._ coach--Humour of the road--The old coachman--The widow--Sally’s trouble--Another surprise--The “Wheatsheaf”--Beautiful scenery--Letter from the Duchess of Sutherland. A most curious dream haunted my mind throughout the night, one of those indescribable phantasmagorian illusions which set all the vibrations of the heart at work without moving the frame, or in imagination only, quite depriving our senses for the time of the true sense of existence. Scarcely had the first gleam of Aurora peeped through my curtains, than a double knock was heard at the street door, apprising me that the time for rising had come, and forthwith brought back my wandering senses to the realities of human life: a minute after, a friend popped into my dressing-room, exclaiming, “Hallo! so you are going to the seat of the war, I hear.” “The seat of the war! who told you so?” “Why, the _Times_, to be sure; I