bigots preaching that we should eat to live, and not live to eat; whereas we should most certainly live to eat during two or three hours out of every twenty-four; and so doing we shall be passing them more creditably than do most men, or probably ourselves, the remainder of the day. The game of “beggar your neighbor” has advocates enough and fervent disciples, so I shall have something to say about eating for the fun of it and as a fine art.
All nations of culture have connected a certain solemn joy with the act of taking food. To “break bread” with one is the expression of the sweet sentiment of hospitality, and for the lovers to share the same loaf before the High Priest was the simple and beautiful marriage-rite among the ancient Romans. The “love feasts” of the early Christians were the repetitions of the only ceremony which their Founder prescribed; and science traces to appropriate nutrition the growth of both physical and mental abilities. The devout Novalis called meal-times the “flower-seasons of the day,” and claimed that all spiritual joys can be expressed through the service of the table. Can there be anything in it unworthy or debasing?
In the light of such declaration should we look on our food-taking, and not merely as feeding and filling. Were the kitchen more of a studio in American homes, we should see a higher style of art in the drawing-rooms. The worst preparation for a day’s work is a poor breakfast, and its shabbiest reward is a bad dinner. If our daughters studied more diligently what the Italians call the melodia
del gusto, their married lives would be attuned to a more harmonious accord.
Consider the appointments and symmetry of a well-served dinner in that high style of art which the French have brought to perfection. The mere sight of the table awakens our esthetic feelings, disperses the cares that have infested the day, and softens the asperities which its rude conflicts have developed. The snowy cloth with its embroidered centre-piece, bearing a vase of roses or restful green; the gay triumphs of the potter’s skill, flanked by polished metal and diaphanous crystal, whose varied forms hint of the manifold gifts of the grape; the chairs, so disposed as to suggest how we should live our whole lives—ever near to others, but not jostling them. Then how rhythmical the progress of the repast! the cold, salt shellfish, followed by the hot and spicy soup, harmonized by the neutral flavor of the fish, its creamy sauce relieved by the bare suspicion of the clean acid of the lemon; and so on through the courses, until the aromatic coffee and the tiny glass of liqueur, redolent of wild herbs or of Alpine flowers, remove both thoughts of food and sense of satiety.
The sequence of such a repast is not a conventionality. Medical men as well as epicures know that it is based on physiology. Once, with a friend of like inquiring mind, I ordered a dinner at a restaurant of renown, exactly reversing the usual sequence, beginning with Chartreuse, coffee, and ice-cream, ending with soup, oysters, and hock. The experiment convinced us that the received is the right
sequence, and we made no second attempt to put the wrong end foremost.
Many will cry that such a dinner as I describe is one for the millionaire and not for the million. They are in error. In France I have repeatedly partaken of such in families of very humble means. They are, in fact, economical. At an ordinary American dinner I have seen seven vegetables and two meats served at once. Half the number would have set forth a much better repast, if served in the French manner. Moreover, an elaborate dinner is not desirable daily; but to have one, say weekly, is as improving as going to the opera, or listening to a great poet read his own verses.
An essential precept of gastronomic culture is to cultivate a taste for all customary dishes. Every locality has its own. Snails and mussels and cockscombs are favorite dishes in Paris, but I have found few Americans enlightened enough to be willing to like them. A broad taste adds to one’s own pleasure and that of others. How disappointing the guest who refuses dish after dish planned with an eye to his pleasure!
Do not be ashamed of the enjoyments of life which are derived from judicious eating and drinking. There are no more accurate standards of a family than its table-manners, table-service, table-talk. Culture is reflected in them as in a mirror. Care not if the bigots and Pharisees call you a wine-bibber and a glutton. You will not be the first to whom they have applied those epithets, and you need not