River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1873-01-03

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Awriter in the Cincinnati CONNER
cial, describing Mark Twain's visit in
England, is moved to discourse Of din
ners. The true London dinner, he re-
marks, consists of from twelve TO TWEEN
ty courses, the half of which are sub
stantial meats, fish, fowls, and game,
braced up and interpolated with ioatties,
soups, and entrees. Then follows a
vista of sullen buildings and sodden
sweets, cakes, custards, and mixed
ices, whose consumption points toward
death and the hours of midnight. And
still the ponderous feast is not over.
There remain piles OF green nuts and
over nourishud fruits, insidious entrees
of late dessert with foreign flavor, and
lastly that inevitable, fatal comestible,
browning the goal of every British din
ner, and whose very look and odor
are suggestive of the grave--a Stilton
cheesel But the London dinner is not
mostly thing of eating. After all has
been said, it is an affair to be drank
rather than masticated, its succeeding
course appearing to be introduced
mainly for the object of clearing the
palate for a fresh flavor of wine. A
delicate hook is placed beside the plate
of microscopic but finely favored Eng
llsh oysters, that begin the meal. Sau-
terne or Moselle succeed to the hook,
with the fish that follows the oysters.
Moselle asd Sauterne give way to the
en- he anftoI Chn.pxr oY,I In, -,
the third course. The sherry is car
led forward with red Burgundy to
accompany the piece de resistance, or
the heavy roast of English sIrloin that
breaks the first shock of appetite in
the process of dining. Chateau
Yquem or white Tokay attends the
fowl that replaces the roast Game is
introduced, with claret and champagne.
A succeeding dish is supported by
glass of Madeira. The Madeira, in
turn, is ccntrasted with Greek wine,
and bottle of ManzanIlla is deity in
serted to brace the tagging stimulant
OF the Tcnedos. With the dessert APP
pear the massive Southern wines-port
and Spanish, while the heavy English
favorite, sherry, has not once disap-
peared from the cloth. The black
wines are carried through the dessert,
and fruits. Bordeaux is slipped with
the cheese, after which the guests drink
all round lidueurs Chatreuse or Mar
aschino, for better digestion, and the
ladies retiring, after the English fash
ion, the cloth is drawn, cognac and
whisky is introduced, and the regular
drinking of an English dinner party
begins.
To support this enormous and mas
sive eating and drinking, one would
suppose that the English would find it
convenient, if not absolutely necessary,
to recline, like the old Romans, at
their meals. The inference is as alb
surd as the fancy of an Anglo-Saxon in
a classic position. An Englishman is
never stead1er than when he rises from
five hours of dining. He appears to
carry off his tons of food and gallons
of wine as lightly as if they were a
biscuit and cup CT tea. And as for
the marvellous population that follows
the ordinary English dinner, the arts
tocratic Londoner appears simply as a
porous membrane, through which
liquids disappear with the simplicity
of the endosmose process in Nature
or rather cognac and whisky sunk into
his organization as gracefully as if the
British stomach were the proper re-
ceptable and destiny of the alcohols.
The upper class English are un.
doubtedly the best dined and best
wined race in the world; and there APP
pears to be dispensation in the moist,
unsteady atmosphere of the English
climate that atones for its disgreeable-
ness by allowing an impunity of appe-
tite to the inhabitants which exists no.
whore else The climate is soaking
one literally. An American arriving in
England finds that he can add one.
third of his ration of the spirituous
beverages without apprehension. But
the stomach OF Crassus would not suf-
flee Mark Twain to enjoy even moiety
of the substantial good will which he is
finding among his doughty English
friends. British hospitality has always
had something deadly about it.
Whether in harrack room, country
house or city club, it pours out its adj
ministrations to the flesh with a mean
ing intent to kill.