Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1889-12-12
ENGLISH TABLE WAYS.
They Are Altogether Too Finicky for Per-
sons of Good Sense.

Theodore Child writes in Harper's
Bdzar: The Anglo-Saxons are afraid
to use their fingers to eat with, es-
pecially the English. Thanks to this
hesitation, have seen in the course of
my travels in the old world many dis
tressing sights. ] have seen lady at
tempt to eat crawfish with knife and
fork and abandon the attempt in de-
spair. | have also seen men in the
same fix. l have seen-oh, barbarous
and cruel OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES,
otherwise apparently civilized, cut off
the points of asparagus and eat these
points only with fork, thus leaving
the best part of the vegetable on THEN
plates. As for artichokes they generally
utterly defeat the attacks of those who
trust only to the knife and fork.
Fingers must be used for eating cer-
tain things notably asparagus, arti-
chokes, fruit, olives, radishes, pastry,
and even small fried fish; in short every
thing which will not dirty or grease the
fingers may be eaten with the fingers.
For my own part I prefer to eat lettuce
salad with my fingers rather than a
fork, and Queen Marie Antoinette and
other ladies of the eighteenth Gen.
tury were of my way of thinking. II
the ladies could only see how pretty is
their gesture when their diaphanous
forefnger and thumb grasp a leaf OF
delicate green lettuce and raise that
leaf from the porcelain plate to their
rosy lips they would all Immediately
take to eating salad la Marie Antoin-
cite. Only bear in mind, good ladies,
that if you do wish to eat lettuce salad
with your fingers you must mix your
salad with oil and vinegar, and not
with that abominable ready-made white
salad dressing, to look upon which
is nauseating.
May heaven preserve us from ex-
cessive Anglomania in matters of table
service and eating. The English tend
to complicate the eating tools far too
much. They have too many forks for
comfort, and the forms of them are too
quaint for practical utility. Certainly
silver dessert knives and forks are very
good in their way, because they are not
susceptible to the action of fruit acids,
but it is vain and clumsy to attempt to
make too exclusive use of the knife and
fork in eating fruit. Don't initiate, for
instance, certain ultra-correct English
damsels who eat cherries with a fork
and swallow the stones because they
are too modest or rather too asinine,
to spit them out on to the plate. Eating
is not thing to be ashamed of. To
thoroughly enjoy a peach you must
bite it and feel the juicy, perfumed
flesh melt in your mouth. But let the
Anglomaniacs say what they please,
there is no necessity of sticking fork
into the peach, and peeling it while so
impaled, as if it were an ill-favored and
foul object. A peach is as beautiful to
the touch as it is to the eye; a peach
held between human fingers has its
beauty enhanced by the beauty of the
fingers. However dainty and ornate
the silver dessert knife and fork may
be- it always irritates me to see people
cut up their peaches, or pears. or april
cots, or what not, into cubes and par
allelopipeds, as if dessert were branch
of comic sections. Initiate Marie An
toinette, ladies; use your fingers more
freely; eat decently, of course, but do
not be the slaves of silly Anglomania
or Newport crazes. To eat a pear or
an apple conveniently, cut it into
quarters, and peal each quarter in turn
as you eat it. The peach, too, can be
cut into quarters, if the eater is timid.
Apricots do not need peeling, nor
plums either. Who would be bold
enough to peel fresh fig, or to touch
such a delicate fruit even with the
purest silver instruments?