THE GOLDEN AGE THAT WAS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 102, 23 January 1918, Page 5

THE GOLDEN AGE THAT WAS

MEMORIES OF MEAT PIES. Men talked sadly of the Golden Age in a Putney omnibus one Saturday. The man with tho bag of plumber's tools started it. As the omnibus passed a coffee-shop ho clutched tho conductor's arm. "Ever try thatplace for meat pies?"_ he asked, pointing to tho steaming windows. "Not that I remember,"' said the conductor. • "Well, you have missed something— Fomething, mind you, that has gone for ever and won't come back again— meat pies!" The plumber raised hia. voice in a sort of ecstasy: "There were never any meat pies in London like theirs." "Why don't they sell-them still?" asked the conductor languidly. "Why," repeated the plumber, "because they can't get the right sort of flour for the crust nor the right sort of meat for tho insides-p-and if they could they couldn't get enough of it. Meat pies!" he cried again, in so lou'd an ecstasy that all the passengers leaned forward. , "You could put one of those nies in your pocket, start eating it at Charing Cross, and munch it until'you got to Putney—and all for The plumber looked round tragically at his fellow-passengers. "Think of it todnv!" he demanded. Then all the passengers in the Putney omnibus began to talk of the Golden Age. "I had an.uncle," said a stout man proudly, "who died of what you might call over-eating." "Not a bad death cither, looking at it all ways," said the plumber encouragingly. "What he really died of," resumed tho stout man, "was what tho doctor called 'syncopated heart.' It took him suddenly after goose and jam roll." "Was the jam roll baked or boiled?" asked a man in a silk hat. "When you talk about jam roll you touch me on a very sensitive point. All my family are immensely fond of it." "And who isn't?" asked,the plumber. "Both my father and my uncle Fred," remarked the man with a silk hat, "had this passion for jam roll. They went about London trying new restaurants for it, just as collectors ro about looking for curio shops. My father always preferred his boiled."' "So do I," ejaculated three omnibus passengers.

"And mv TJncle Fred said it was best baked."

"Certainly," cried four omnibuus passengers.

_ Well, my father had been unconscious twelve hours 'when ray uncle canw and bent over him, and then ho said id a clear voice. 'You were ri"ht li'i best baked'—and died." "Poor man," said a woman in a corner, "fancy finding it out too late. It shows you what life is." The omnibus passengers turned to lighter food topics. Somebody talked of the inedible steaks of London's prewar days.

The commercial traveller spoke- of wonderful Bath buns that he used to eat ai a. confectionor's on Haverstock Hill.

Ah, the Bath bun," cried another 1 of the passengers. "It was one of the nrst things this awful war killed." "And to think that whiting were 4d. when 1 married," interposed another of the passengers "And muffins: will they ever come back? asked another. "And what about Melton Mowbr.iv pork pies, the real sort?" domanded the plumber. I

' Gone, like one of those dead arts." "And think of fcho places all over London where for a shilling you could get a cut from the joint, two vegetables, pudding, cheese, and bread. Will they ever come back again?" Everyone sorrowfully agreed that the Golden Age was no more.—"T.B.," in the- "Daily Mail."