"'One kidney, indeed, and you call this heaven! At any rate you will
have sausages?'
"'Then the angel will say, 'We shall have some after Sunday, sir, but we
are quite out of them at present.'
"And I shall say, somewhat sulkily, 'Then I suppose I must have eggs and
bacon.'
"But in the morning there will come up a red mullet, beautifully cooked,
a couple of kidneys and three sausages browned to a turn, and seasoned
with just so much sage and thyme as will savour without overwhelming
them; and I shall eat everything. It shall then transpire that the angel
knew about the luggage, and what I was to have for breakfast, all the
time, but wanted to give me the pleasure of finding things turn out
better than I had expected. Heaven would be a dull place without such
occasional petty false alarms as these."
I have no business to leave my father's story, but the mouth of the ox
that treadeth out the corn should not be so closely muzzled that he
cannot sometimes filch a mouthful for himself; and when I had copied out
the foregoing somewhat irreverent paragraphs, which I took down (with no
important addition or alteration) from my father's lips, I could not
refrain from making a few reflections of my own, which I will ask the
reader's forbearance if I lay before him.
Let heaven and hell alone, but think of Hades, with Tantalus, Sisyphus,
Tityus, and all the rest of them.
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