HOOD'S TABLE TALK.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LVI, Issue 8683, 16 February 1907, Page 3

HOOD'S TABLE TALK.

Once, when Charles Lamb, supping at Hood's, was asked what part of the roasted fowl he would ['have, and replied, "The back; I—l always prefer the back," Hood, dropping his knife and fork, exclaimed: "By heaven ! I would not have believed it if anybody else had sworn it." "Believed what?" said Mrs Hood, anxiously, and colouring to the temples. 1 ' Believed what? Why, that Charles Lamb is a backbiter," replied the rogue, with one of his short, quick laughs. When Hood's foot, swelled so that he could hardly touch the ground, he comforted himself with the reflection that it could not be a long-standing complaint like the gout. He asserted that a certain trembling of his hand in weakness was not palsy, but only an inclination to shake hands. He was so thin, he said, that he could drink nothing that was thick, and would have to stick his poor spider legs like piles, in the sea-mud to get mussels to them. In his youth Hood sat at a desk in some commercial office, but found that he was not destined to become a winner of the Ledger. He complained of his looks, because his face insinuated a false Hood.