“It was perfection, Mr. Sieghortner,” said Irving, as he sipped his coffee, and addressed the old man,—“the canvas-back superb. You are so interested in the art of dining that you will appreciate a little experience of mine in connection with the great American bird,—I don’t mean the eagle, but the duck.”
Sieghortner rubbed his hands, and said, “Oh, yes,—why, of course!”
“An old American friend of mine,—dead now, alas!—when he was in his prime, as they say, frequently had numbers of canvas-back ducks sent to London from New York. On the first great occasion of this kind he invited thirty guests to eat thirty ducks. He spent a day or two instructing the _chef_ of a well-known club how to cook them. The kitchen was to be well heated, you know, and the ducks carried gently through.”
“Oh, yes, that’s the way!” said Sieghortner, rubbing his hands.
“Well, the night came. His guests were in full force. The ducks were served. They had a whitey-brown and flabby appearance. Bateman cut one and put it aside. He tried another, and in his rage flung it under the table. The dinner was an utter failure.”
“My friend did not forget it for months. He was continually saying, ‘I wonder how that fool spoiled our ducks; I have tried to find out, but it is a mystery.’ Nearly a year afterwards I heard of the _chef’s_ sudden death. Meeting my friend, I said, ‘Have you heard of poor So-and-so, the _chef_ at the club,—he is dead!’—‘I am very glad of it!’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you know, he cooked those ducks over the gas!’”
“Dear! dear!” exclaimed Sieghortner, a quick expression of anger on his face, “why, he ought to have been hanged!”
IT is customary in American theatres for the orchestra to play the audience out as well as in.
“We will dispense with that,” said Irving to his conductor, Mr. Ball.
“It is a general habit here,” remarked the Star manager.
“Yes, I understand so,” Irving replied; “but it seems to me a difficult matter to select the music appropriately to the piece. What sort of music do you usually play?”
“Ah, well, you see our plays are so different, that a march which would do one night would be entirely out of place the next. Have you the score of ‘The Dead March in Saul’?”
“Well, then, I think we will finish as we do in London,—with the fall of the curtain. If we make a failure on Monday night, the most appropriate thing you could play would be ‘The Dead March.’ As you have no score of it we will do without the exit music.”