These details have been given at length, not only because the meal seemed to me, while I was eating it, to be worthy of whole columns of print, but because one of the besetting sins of our dear land is to serve a profusion of food no one wants and which the hostess would never have dreamed of ordering had she been alone.
Nothing is more wearisome than to sit at table and see course after course, good, bad, and indifferent, served, after you have eaten what you want.And nothing is more vulgar than to serve them; for either a guest refuses a great deal of the food and appears uncivil, or he must eat, and regret it afterwards.If we ask people to a meal, it should be to such as we eat, as a general thing, ourselves, and such as they would have at home.Otherwise it becomes ostentation and vulgarity.Why should one be expelled to eat more than usual because a friend has been nice enough to ask one to take one's dinner with him, instead of eating it alone? It is the being among friends that tempts, not the food; the fact at skilful waiters have been able to serve a dozen varieties of fish, flesh, and fowl during the time you were at table has added little to any one's pleasure.On the contrary! Half the time one eats from pure absence of mind, a number of most injurious mixtures and so prepares an awful to-morrow and the foundation of many complicated diseases.
I see Smith and Jones daily at the club, where we dine cheerfully together on soup, a cut of the joint, a dessert, and drink a pint of claret.But if either Mrs.Smith or Mrs.Jones asks me to dinner, we have eight courses and half as many wines, and Smith will say quite gravely to me, "Try this '75 'Perrier Jouet'," as if he were in the habit of drinking it daily.It makes me smile, for he would as soon think of ordering a bottle of that wine at the club as he would think of ordering a flask of nectar.