Bismarck weekly tribune., 1888-09-28

AT THE TABLE.
LITTLE PEOPLE SHOULD FEED LIKE
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.
Effects of Disorderly Conduct at the Dim
ner Table-Teaching Good Manners to
Hungry Childrea - A Task for the
NIother-Sad Results.
How often it is the case that when guests
are at table to whom some Difference and
ceremony may be due, we see tho children
made the center of observation and conver-
sation, allowed to clamor for what they want,
to reach and grasp and take and put back,
and indeed sometimes to make pandemo-
mum Of the whole occasion! They talk their
own talk, and they make other talk nearly if
not quite impossible; they join in the gen.
eral conversation unreproved obstruct it or
silence it altogether; they delay the waitress
and the dish, they express their wants with
vehemence, they leave their seats, they climb
back into them, they quarrel, they cry, they
have to be appeased, they retard the helping
of others, they spill and smear and make
their neighborhood dangerous, and their
daubed fingers and faces and tears, and their
tricks and their manners generally are
enough to cause such qualms in the observer
as will prevent repetition Of the attempt to
dine In their company; for the guests are
driven to leave that table with feeling that
pulse and water arc better with peace than
ths stalled OK is to this accompaniment of
shildren ruined by indulgence.
Yet none of this should be or need be. 1t
Is not, to be sure, an entirely easy matter to
have it otherwise; it requires constant over
sight and effort to prevent it, to counteract
it; for healthy, happy, hearty children have
all something of the early barbarian in them,
and this little barbarian will come to the top
If it is left to itself, just as the cultivated
garden flower, when neglected, will waste its
seed summer after summer, and at last return
to the wild stock from which it was brought
to its educated blossom.
And it is certainly far from an agreeable
task, this teaching Of table manners to chill
dren Of good appetites, especially if there he
among them any awkwardness left handed
ness, absent minde6ness or forgetfulness, or
worse still, any disobedience or resentment;
80 disagreeable task indeed is it that it
sometimes seems as if it might be best to
have a person stand behind each little chair,
for no other purpose at all than to attend to
every movement of the child's hand and
arm and mouth till habits are established
that shall be irreproachable To see that
the food is taken up with the fork and not
with the knife; that the knife and fork are
both held as they ought to be; that the mouth
Is not allowed to display it's contents at every
revolution; that the morsels are not spilled
and scattered over chair and floor and bib
and cloth; that the fingers are not used as
chopsticks; that the drink is not swallowed
in resounding gulps, or the soup slipped with
relishing gurgles; that glasses are not over
set; that hands do not reach forward and
grab for the contents of dish, or hover and
handle before selection when a dish is Of
fered; that the left hand shall net replace
the right; that the movements shall not be
hurried or abrupt, violent or of too wide
sweep; that the tongue shall be silent
member
Few things more early manifest the good
sense and taste and diligence of a mother
than the behavior of her child at tive table
A child who, unreproved, stuffs foad into
oA4S 4AoucAA C4o ~ oA4C WGlN To De
snatched away otherwise and vanish into
thin air, who bends over the table as pig
does over a trough, and makes scarcely less
noise about it, whose hair bangles into the
plate, whose elbows rest on the table or make
acute angles with the ceiling, whose knife
and fork stand erect at intervals, who lolls
along the board, whose fingers are greasy,
whose face no less SO, whose mouthfuls are
held high in air for the general survey be-
fore plunging them to their doom, whose
glass is in slop-all Of whose actions in the
qualification of appetite or the satisfaction
OF hunger are more those of young savage,
not to say young animal, than of an intelli-
gent child-such child betrays that its
mother has paid no attention to decorum or
decency in bringing it up, but has eaten and
drunken and amused herself, and never
taken the trouble to turn her head to see
whether the child behaved like civilized
being, satisfied that, if only the food had
disappeared from its plate, it had then been
properly fed.
This neglect on the part of mother is a
great pity, for it makes q sad difference with
child's happiness whether it finds itself
sought for and beloved. or avoided and con-
temned and laughed; at and the latter fate
can hardly be Kindred if a child's manners at
table are bad to nauseation It will see other
children preferred before itself, kindly
ent7eated and caressed, and it will have the
injurious sense of being young Orson-in-
furious because calculated to make it wild
and reckless in many others ways, and there
fore again unloved. And certainly a child is
happier for the consciousness that it is quite
the equal Of other children in all those things
which are within its volition and capacity;
and all children, it is notorious, love to be
praised for their gentlemanly or lady like
department 1t seems hard then that, owing
to the idleness or indifference of the parent
or the proper care taker, child should be
denied the pleasure which it might have of
being noticeably gentle hammered at the
table.-Harpers Bazar
Fell on Lincoln's Shoulders.
When President and Mrs Lincoln fret