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is the kind of place where I can imagine Doctor Johnson and Charles Lamb sitting in a corner."

"You are an incurable sentimentalist," he said. "Besides, Lamb would have had to sit on Johnson's knee, I expect. If I remember rightly, Lamb was a very small urchin when Doctor Johnson died."

"Why be so literal?" I protested. "Haven't you any sentiment for fine antique flavour, and all that sort of thing?"

"If there is one thing where sentiment plays no part with me," he said, "it is food. At meal times I am distinctly a realist. Fine antique flavour is rather upsetting when you find it in your meat. But still," he continued, "I must admit this looks good." He beamed approvingly at the thick chop and baked potatoes and beans and coffee the waiter had put down in front of us.

"Evidently you don't order your food," I said. "They give you the standardized meal of the day. Fall to! These beans baked in cheese strike me as excellent."

I have never seen waiters rush around with such speed as they did in that crowded cellar, where flickering candle-gleams cast a tawny light over the crowded tables of men packed shoulder to shoulder. They flashed in and out through the