“‘More honoured in the breach,’ do you say, Mr. Author?” I fancy I hear some reader inquire. “Are these your sentiments? Do you really mean them?” Well, perhaps, they ought to be qualified. Unless a man breakfast very early, and dine very late, he cannot do himself much good by eating a square meal at 1.30 or 2.0 P.M. There can be no question but that whilst thousands of the lieges—despite soup-kitchens, workhouses, and gaols—perish of absolute starvation, as many of their more fortunate brethren perish, in the course of time, from gluttony, from falling down (sometimes literally) and worshipping the Belly-god.
Years ago Sir Henry Thompson observed to a friend of the writer’s:
“Most men who seek my advice are suffering under one of two great evils—eating too much good food, or drinking too much bad liquor; and occasionally they suffer under both evils.”
“This luncheon,” writes Oliver Wendell Holmes, “is a very convenient affair; it does not require any special dress; it is informal; and can be light or heavy as one chooses.”
The American—the male American at all events—takes far more count of luncheon than of breakfast.
But in many cases luncheon and early dinner are synonymous terms. Take the family luncheon, for instance, of the middle classes, where mother, governess, and little ones all assemble in front of the roast and boiled, at the principal meal of the day, and the more or less snowy tablecloth is duly anointed with gravy by “poor baby,” in her high chair, and the youngest but one is slapped at intervals by his instructress, for using his knife for the peas—at the risk of enlarging his mouth—or for swallowing the stones of the cherries which have been dealt him, or her, from the tart. This is not the sort of meal for the male friend of the family to “drop in” at, if he value the lapels of his new frock-coat, and be given to blushing. For children have not only an evil habit of “pawing” the visitor with jammy fingers, but occasionally narrate somewhat “risky” anecdotes. And a child’s ideas of the Christian religion, nay, of the Creator himself, are occasionally more quaint than reverent.
“Ma, dear,” once lisped a sweet little thing of six, “what doth God have for hith dinner?”
“S-sh-sh, my child!” replied the horrified mother, “you must not ask such dreadful questions. God doesn’t want any dinner, remember that.”
“Oh-h-h!” continued the unabashed and dissatisfied enfant terrible. And, after a pause, “then I thuppose he hath an egg with hith tea.”