Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-09-10
CHAT.

week winch announced 1T as Mile. Kheas
own version of the delightful play"
1t makes one wink with establishment;
for, the daring lady is still in the primer of
the English language, and, in her venture
some dramatic plunges is at times totally
thlckly, and hopelessly incomprehensible
to her American auditors who catch on once
IN while, and are in the lapses of intelli-
glblllty, carried along by manufactured
enthusiasm for everything foreign, every
thing we'll draped, and well advertised.
Perhaps Mademoiselle meant
to qualify her alien assumption of Lady
Teezle as her own version. In that sense
it was markedly her own.
According to mythology Rhea was one
of the six female Titans, and, as Cronus,
her consort, had peculiarly economical
way of getting rid of his children imme-
diately after their birth by swallowing
them, lest they should conspire against
him. Rhea was determined to save her son
Zeus from the fate of the five preceding
sons. She gave to her perambulating
sepulcher of a husband stone wrapped in
swaddling clothes, which he swallowed
without further examination.
Now the modern Belgian
hard to swallow when she prepares her
own version of Sheridan's glittering
comedy-and we look at the announce
ment wonderingly-aye, and even regret
fully, when there are so many things of
which we are pining for version.
AS for one clamoring and esurient in
stance that MENU at the Willard banquet
Monday night Rhea or any other
gifted body given to versions who could
solve that masterpiece of mystery-or
having been there could identify anything
ssculent answering to that monstrous
French rating, would confer a much more
appreciable boon on a benighted town
than by fixing up Sheridan or Congreve
with Gallo pertness.
That bill-nay MENU-remains as un-
deciphirable to the average but respectable
banqueter, as the inscriptions on the
obelisk are to the casual observer. Words,
said Telleyrand, were invented to conceal
thoughts, and that MENU was stylish
blind to plentiful lack of food. Never
were 80 many fine foreign words used for
the illusory butter of imaginary parsnips
Mors doeurre says the bill printed in
the GLOBE and morS means horse
blt-a curb which was what
was needed for that hors - and
which anyway was taking beastly advan-
tage of the daring six hundred who didn't
ride into the jaws of anything, but brought
their own along ready for more serious
work than that furnished in the petities
borches, little mouthfuls, morsels or bits
that followed.
o, the glories of Gallo gastronomy on
the carte of the Mell-ican man over the
lake!
The guests could have eaten poule de
paririe quite as eagerly if introduced to
them under its own familiar Min
nesota name of prairie chicken, and
teal duck too should have
been left to its primitive title which is as
appetizing as sarcelles.
Selle de cherruie is plain saddle
of deer, venison, roe buck
or whatever English term you choose to
give it, and 10, see the disguise to which
the familiar dish of the state is subjected.
The printers had spasms over that MENU,
the guests had collapse, and the general
public mild melancholy over it's ignor-
ance of such elegant cabalistical cooking.
We westerners show goodly degree of
independence in other directions. Indeed
we evince wholesome Indifference to the
precipitation of eastern customs, and the
fulsomeness of inical imitation.
1t seems the veriest nonsense for De ople
to play at French while eating, while the
majority of eaters couldn't
if they starve for it order one of the courses
in its foreign verbiage.
Besides in number of instances the
French wording of bills of fare is dis
guise for cooking which wouldn't pass
muster in plain English, but which most
people will accept 80 dubbed because it
savors Of familiarity with that fabulous
cuisine whose experts are better paid
when they are achere than Harvard pro-
fessors. Nothing pays better than this
foreign appeal to our self-conceit, no mat
ter in what shape it comes, whether it be a
menu, or an actress whose graceful and
'ticing ways, as the darkey
says, makes US enjoy these
thick and semi-intelligible onslaught on
English.
Do you conjecture that Mary Anderson
could wrestle with French in Paris with
like profitable liberation, and give its
critical and nimble populace her Gown
version of Racine's Les Horaces?" Not
much.
crowd might''go once for curiosity,
but the good natured public idiot that we
are collectively would be impossible over
there.
1t is only very recently that even an
actor like Edwin Booth could get hear
ing over the ocean, and his magnificent
reception in Germany during the year is
only laggard recognition of what we
have been doing scores of years for hosts
of lesser claimants with national gener-
osity quite monumental. In some ways
we are pushing the French graft to the
exclusion of our consistent identity.