A breakfast indeed, when it appeared! Mrs. Peterkin had mistaken
the alphabetical suggestion, and had grasped the idea that the
whole alphabet must be represented in one breakfast.
This, therefore, was the bill of fare: Apple-sauce, Bread, Butter,
Coffee, Cream, Doughnuts, Eggs, Fish-balls, Griddles, Ham, Ice
(on butter), Jam, Krout (sour), Lamb-chops, Morning Newspapers,
Oatmeal, Pepper, Quince-marmalade, Rolls, Salt, Tea Urn,
Veal-pie, Waffles, Yeast-biscuit.
Mr. Peterkin was proud and astonished. "Excellent!" he cried.
"Every letter represented except Z." Mrs. Peterkin drew from her
pocket a letter from the lady from Philadelphia. "She thought you
would call it X-cellent for X, and she tells us," she read, "that if
you come with a zest, you will bring the Z."
Mr. Peterkin was enchanted. He only felt that he ought to invite
the children in the primary schools to such a breakfast; what a
zest, indeed, it would give to the study of their letters!
It was decided to begin with Apple-sauce.
"How happy," exclaimed Mr. Peterkin, "that this should come first
of all! A child might be brought up on apple-sauce till he had
mastered the first letter of the alphabet, and could go on to the
more involved subjects hidden in bread, butter, baked beans, etc."
Agamemnon thought his father hardly knew how much was hidden
in the apple. There was all the story of William Tell and the Swiss
independence.
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