The Adventures of Charles Edward

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1908 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX A GUIDE TO ELDORADO THIS story, if one traces it to its origins, is founded on, derived from, rooted in (whichever may be the correct expression) the burnt end of a beefsteak intended for the lunch of Charles Edward and Lady Angela Austin. The burning, not in itself seemingly important, took place late in March. Lady Angela had intended to administer merely the mildest reproof, but the cook seized the opportunity to explain that her heart was sore with innumerable grievances, for which the ruining of a single lunch was no assuagement whatever. Those who know anything of the American domestic life need not be told that now events followed fast upon events. The original beefsteak-burner departed, but many of her kind passed through the house, a nightmare procession of incompetence and incivility. Happily the Austins are always asked to dine by everybody in New York who has a decent cook. Happily, too, as Charles Edward remarked, no one need starve while Delmonico's and Beefsteak John's still stand where they did. Yet there are moments when the boiled egg at one's own fireside is more tempting than ortolans (if, indeed, such birds exist outside of novels) at another's table. Lady Angela, standing at the drawing-room windows to watch the departure of the tenth reptile, and realizing that the fierce joy she felt in the fact that it was raining cats and dogs upon the wretched woman betokened the gradual sapping of all gentleness and kindness in her own nature, turned in revolt to the writing-table, and extracting some cable blanks, penned a despairing cry for help--for a servant if you dislike the good American word help --to a cousin in Paris. There at once a chef was found and started on his seasick way to New York, where upon a bright May morning...