What to eat, how to serve it

There is no doubt that the average American eats too rapidly. No one who has witnessed the feats of deglutition performed by commercial travellers at a railway station will cavil at this assertion. It is safe to attribute the national disease of dyspepsia to this cause fully as much as to the indigestible viands of which the ordinary citizen makes his chief diet. And this haste is not confined to the hotel dining-room or the rail- way eating-house. In private households as astonishing and disgusting exhibitions of rapid gorging may be seen as are ever witnessed in public restaurants. No one who had once beheld the spectacle could ever forget the fashion in which meals were conducted in a certain home where wealth and every evidence of outward refinement gave promise of better things. The father, a man of business from his sixteenth year, plainly considered eating the duty to be accomplished at the table, and quite ignored such minor considerations as the interchange of thought or observation, or any of the social features usually connected with the operation of dining. If he could not quite equal Napoleon the First, who was said to have often devoured his entire dinner in six minutes, he did not fall far behind the great warrior. Soup, meat, vegetables, dessert, were swallowed in rapid succession and in almost utter silence. The slight delay inseparable from a change of courses was endured impatiently. Almost before the last mouthful was down, the eager man would push back his chair, spring to his feet, and, with a muttered word of farewell, make a rush for the street. In an instant the slam of the front door would announce that he was on his way back to his office. His children were not backward in imitating him, and all the pleadings of their refined, care-worn mother were powerless to check the influence of the father's example. With such a rush at meal-times, elegant or even tolerably decent table manners were impossible, and the visitor in the home found eating a difficult business when accompanied by the sight of the haste and habits that often could only be described as revolting. If the midday meal must be hurried, let it also be simple. There is no rhyme or reason in attempting to dispose of a three or four course dinner in thirty or forty minutes. If only half an hour can be allowed for the repast, let this consist of two courses only, either a soup and a meat course, a meat course and a salad, or a meat course and a dessert. These should be served promptly, but in an orderly fashion, and both the conduct of the dinner and the gastric powers will be benefited by such simplicity. Upon this point the house mother must insist. Even if her husband will not conform to her wishes in this regard, she should require from servants and children a certain amount of propriety in serving- the meal and decorum in its discussion. After seeing that the dinner is punctually served, and that the courses follow one another promptly, she should herself set the example of deliberate eating, and should strive, by the introduction of interesting subjects, to encourage the pleasant chat that is a potent aid to digestion. It will cost an effort to do this when she is weary and harassed by household worries, but she will enjoy her own meal more if her mind is, by any agreeable means, distracted for a little while from her cares. For the midday dinner the table should be laid as it is at night, and the waiting should be performed in the same fashion. The vegetables should, if possible, be served from the side, although in a family where no waitress is employed they may be set 12 177