"Stop it!" cried Letitia, laying a gloved finger on my lips. "You think you are getting clever. You are trying to imitate Grundy, Pinero, and Barrie, and I assure you that it is all lost on me. I want a cook, and not an epigram."
"As I said," I continued forcefully and rather loudly, "much of the immorality of the world is simply due to Christian food. Christian food is easy and generally—boiled. The mistaken idea that sound morals are the result of bad digestion is responsible for the inartistic plight of England and America."
"Hush, Archie!" exclaimed Letitia, looking around her nervously. "You talk as though you were haranguing a mob. And just the sort of nonsense that a mob loves, too. As for the plight of England and America—you are forgetting France. And look where French gluttony has led the nation! As for lack of morality—"
"Bah!" I remarked perversely, "France's lack of morality is a phrase used for advertising purposes, my girl. There is a bigger lack of it in London and New York, but you don't hear so much about it, because it is ugly—like English plum pudding and American baked beans. No people can be really wicked who have invented the Duval restaurants. Compare the light-hearted, cheerful, exhilarating, comfortably-stomached Parisians, sitting outside their cafés and sipping their eaux sucrées, with the greedy English, absorbing stodgy buns and dingy lemonade, and with the criminal Americans, assimilating poisonous ice-creams, and destroying their mucous membranes with odious candies."
"At the next station I get out and walk," declared Letitia furiously. "I'll leave you, Archie. Your breakfast has gone to your head. What is the matter with you? Really, I begin to think that our domestic troubles have unseated your reason."
The train was stopping at the Fifty-third Street station and Letitia rose, prepared to get out. As a matter of fact, I had been enjoying myself immensely. My words had been addressed to Letitia, but they were selfishly designed for my own delectation. I liked to hear myself talk—in which respect, I resembled a good many other people I knew.
"Sit down, Letitia," I said, "I've finished. I just wanted to relieve myself of a few thoughts, which seemed relevant to the occasion."
"Everybody is looking at you," she asserted in vexation, "and—I'll get out, Archie, if you continue. What must these people think of a young man, excitedly discussing the ethics of food in the Sixth Avenue elevated railroad?"
"In a train positively littered with advertisements of food," I added savagely. "All around us are legends of pickles, and biscuits, and sauces, and catsup—and horrid things that are bought cooked, because we live in a country where the art is unknown, and where the cooks talk of Christian principles. You are not logical, Letitia. It seems to me that this is the very place where, if you don't think of food, advertisers lose their money."
"Well, think of it," muttered Letitia defiantly, "but don't talk about it."