LETTUCE SALAD.
A pleasant plant, green before the sun.—Isaiah.
Pour oil upon it, pure oil, olive.—Leviticus.
Oil and salt, without prescribing how much.—Ezra vii. 22.
ICE CREAM.
Ice like morsels.—Psalms.
CHEESE.
Carry these ten cheeses unto the captain.—Samuel.
FRUITS
All kind of fruits.—Eccles.
COFFEE
Last of all.—Matthew xxi. 37.
They had made an end of eating.—Amos vii. 2.
CIGARS.
Am become like dust and ashes.—Job xxx. 19.
And so on. Written conundrums are good stimulants to conversation, and dinner cards might be greatly historical, not too learned. A legend of the day, as Lady Day, or Michaelmas, is not a bad promoter of talk. Or one might allude to the calendar of dead kings and queens, or other celebrities, or ask your preferences, or quote something from a memoir, to find out that it is a birthday of Rossini or Goethe. All these might be written on a dinner card, and will open the flood gates of a frozen conversation.
Let each dinner giver weave a net out of the gossamer threads of her own thoughts. It will be the web of the Lady of Shalott, and will bid the shadows of pleasant memory to remain, not float "forever adown the river," even toward "towered Camelot" where they may be lost.
Some opulent dinner giver once made the dinner card the vehicle of a present, but this became rather burdensome. It was trying and embarrassing to carry the gifts home, and the poorer entertainer hesitated at the expense. The outlay had better come out of one's brain, and the piquing of curiosity with a contradiction like this take its place:—