Meantime his affairs at home went upside
down, and his two brothers had a wretched time, where his first
boutade was to kick both their wives one morning out of doors, and
his own too, and in their stead gave orders to pick up the first
three strollers could be met with in the streets. A while after he
nailed up the cellar door, and would not allow his brothers a drop
of drink to their victuals {95}. Dining one day at an alderman's in
the city, Peter observed him expatiating, after the manner of his
brethren in the praises of his sirloin of beef. "Beef," said the
sage magistrate, "is the king of meat; beef comprehends in it the
quintessence of partridge, and quail, and venison, and pheasant, and
plum-pudding, and custard." When Peter came home, he would needs
take the fancy of cooking up this doctrine into use, and apply the
precept in default of a sirloin to his brown loaf. "Bread," says
he, "dear brothers, is the staff of life, in which bread is
contained inclusive the quintessence of beef, mutton, veal, venison,
partridge, plum-pudding, and custard, and to render all complete,
there is intermingled a due quantity of water, whose crudities are
also corrected by yeast or barm, through which means it becomes a
wholesome fermented liquor, diffused through the mass of the bread.
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