Punch, or the London Charivari

iness with you. Suppose the lady takes you? You make a pencil-mark against each dish which, it seems to you, she will fancy; and if you are right more often than you are wrong, you win--and the lady does not pay you. In the contrary case you lose--and you pay the lady. It need scarcely be said that you annotate your own copy of the menu, and that the lady does not see it until the dinner is at an end. The same principle is observed in betting with a gentleman in reference to a lady's probable selection; but in this latter case neither of the parties interested is at liberty to express any opinion, directly or indirectly, as to the merits or demerits of the different dishes from which the lady has to choose. Any member of the unfair sex may make sure of winning from her antagonist--who will naturally have marked a certain number of dishes--by simply abstaining from food throughout the dinner; though the lady of the house might think this impolite. Menu-betting is in any case an agreeable past