John is sensible, and does not object to left-overs now and then, when flavorously put together. Today’s salmi, or salad, or croquette is, to him, a reminiscence of yesterday’s roast. The oyster-stew made by his wife to spare servants wearied by laundry work, is as satisfactory to him, once in several whiles, as a six-course dinner would be. He sees in an Irish stew, supported by browned potatoes, hot biscuits, home-made cake and a capital cup of coffee, a feast fit for the gods as represented by his hungry self and any fellow he may have corralled and brought in to “take pot-luck.”
“I ask yer honors if that is anny sort of a shkull to take to Donnybrook Fair!” cried an Emeralder who had killed his man “in a bit of a foight,” when the defense produced the broken skull of the deceased in court to prove that the “frontal, parietal and occipital segments were extraordinarily thin.”
Mary submits to a jury of her peers if she has not a right to be “put about” when Johnny comes marching home serenely with a guest in tow, who, for the lack of time to make anything else ready, must be set down to left-over oyster, or Irish stew.
“When a man is asked to dinner, he expects a dinner!” she asserts in justifiable vexation. “And when all is said and done, the fact remains that one’s husband is not a visitor for whom one must mind her p’s and q’s.”
“A PICK-UP DINNER”
IRISH STEW AND BROWNED POTATOES
HOT BISCUITS
SLICED HOME-MADE CAKE
“AND A CAPITAL CUP OF COFFEE”
Yet—and a “yet” that might fill a whole line if its importance were considered—there is, also, much to be said on John’s side. Any bachelor can ask the old friend who looks in upon him in business hours and places, to lunch or dine with him at a chop house or hotel. The guest knows what he would get there. Just such a meal as he can buy for dollars and cents at fifty other “eating joints” all over the country. A meal, eaten in the presence of from twenty to one hundred other feeders, amid the babble of voices, the rattle of crockery and the click of knives and forks.
It is the married man alone who can offer the wayfarer a taste—and a generous taste—of HOME. The dear old fellow thrills in every inch of body and soul when he claps an ancient chum on the back with—
“Now you must see my wife and babies, old man!” or says to a business acquaintance in town for the day: “Mrs. Johannes and I would be charmed to have you take a family dinner with us. I am just going home now. Come with me!”
If malcontent Mary but knew it, he pays the highest possible compliment to her, as woman and housekeeper, by taking her welcome for granted.