OBSERVATIONS ON CARVING.
“‘Have you learned to carve?’ for it is ridiculous not to carve well.
“A man who tells you gravely that he cannot carve, may as well tell you that he cannot feed himself; it is both as necessary and as easy.”—Lord Chesterfield’s 211th Letter.
Next to giving a good dinner, is treating our friends with hospitality and attention, and this attention is what young people have to learn. Experience will teach them in time, but till they acquire it, they will appear ungraceful and awkward.
Although the art of carving is one of the most necessary accomplishments of a gentleman, it is little known but to those who have long been accustomed to it; a more useful or acceptable present cannot be offered to the public than to lay before them a book calculated to teach the rising generation how to acquit themselves amiably in this material part of the duties of the table.
Young people seldom study this branch of the philosophy of the banquet, beyond the suggestion of their own whims and caprices; and cut up things not only carelessly, but wastefully, until they learn the pleasure of paying butchers’ and poulterers’ bills on their own account.
Young housekeepers, unaccustomed to carving, will, with the help of the following instructions, soon be enabled to carve with ease and elegance; taking care also to observe, as occasion may offer, the manner in which a skilful operator sets about his task, when a joint or fowl is placed before him.
It has been said, that you may judge of a person’s character by his handwriting; you may judge of his conscience by his carving.