THE RETURN FROM THE HOLIDAY.
"Sed revocare gradum ... hoc opus, hic labor, est."
THE SHRIMP TEST.
At last we have an explanation of a good deal of the social and industrial unrest of recent months. Since April there has been a serious shrimp shortage.
How far this is responsible for dissatisfaction among the miners and other workers it is impossible to say; but in other circles of society this shrimp shortage has been responsible for much. From golf-courses this summer has come a stream of complaint that the game is not what it was. Sportsmen, again, have gone listlessly to their task and have petulantly wondered why the bags have been so poor. House-parties have been failures. In many a Grand Stand nerves have gone to pieces. Undoubtedly this grave news from the North Sea is the explanation. What can one expect when there are no shrimps for tea?
For the eating of shrimps is more than a mere assimilation of nourishment, more even than the consumption of an article of diet which is beneficial to brain tissues and nerve centres. After all, the oyster or the haddock serves equally well for those purposes.
But before one eats a shrimp a certain deftness and delicacy of manipulation are needed to effect the neat extraction of the creature from its unpalatable cuticle. Not so with the haddock.
Shrimp-eating is something more than table deportment; it is a test of sangfroid and savoir faire, qualities so necessary to the welfare of the nation. The man who can efficiently prepare shrimps for seemly consumption, chatting brightly the while with his fair neighbour and showing neither mental nor physical distress, can be relied upon to comport himself with efficiency whether in commerce or statecraft.
Watch a man swallow an oyster, and how much more do you know of him after the operation than you knew before? But put him in a Marchioness's drawing-room and set a shrimp before him, and the manner in which he tackles the task will reveal the sort of stuff he is made of.