The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1892-05-14
Our 0lio.
THE oHBsFERFIELDs AT HOME.
Or Home Manners as They Ought to BE

Octave Thsnet in Baltimore Sunday News
ANY one who has ever visited familiarly
in French family will remember the de-
Iightful atmosphere of habitual and car
ressing politeness translated into our differ
ent manner and life. The Chesterfields are
not especially clever or rich or entertaining,
but it is a joy to visit them, because they
are so polite.
They are polite to each other and to the
stranger within their gates, and Mrs. Ches-
terfeld's maids declare that Mrs. Chester
field is as polite in the kitchen as in the
parlor. Their habitual, spontaneous, lovely
courtesy is never failing talisman to at
tract.
When | consider the social success of the
Chesterfelds-top put the matter on its low
est ground-I wonder how it is that more
people do not cultivate the same charm. 1t
can be cultivated as much as mustache or
the habit of smokingl My friends, the
Chesterfelds, may have been born polite,
but l am sure they have also grown polite
ness assiduously. The little amenities, the
small costless courtesies, they are the luxu-
ries; they ought to be the necessities of
living
do not know better place to begin
about the cultivation of these fruitful graces
than our meal times In how many Amer
lean families is the family meal time for
feeding in the first place and fault finding
in the second There is nothing morally
wrong about eating-unless one eat too
much; but it is not in itself beautiful act,
it needs to be embellished with good temper
and dainty service and pleasant talk.
The Cavils who belong to the church and
subscribe so liberally to every charity 60
ing, that have not the heart to describe
them except a mile out Of recognition, have
cut glass and old family silver ravishing to
behold, they have art embroidery that takes
the appetite away from sheer delight of the
ewes; never on their table does one see hook
or sauterne served in plain glass or claret
served in cnlorea glass, They eat their
oysters with oyster forks and they have fish
knives for their fish like their English cous
ins. while their ice cream sets and their
bread and butter plates are vision. They
have old Sevres and new Royal Worcester,
and they can tell-and do-the blighting
effect of the double crossed swords on your
Nielsen ware.
But when one dimes at the Cavils and
hears Papa Cavil find the soup too hot, or
the roast overdone, or the entrees to cold,
or the mayonnaise too thin, or the sweets
not to his liking; and Mamma Cavil mOans
over the servants between courses; or it
may be there is kind of tournament of
criticism wherein all the family, in turn,
SHES something verbal at the offending dish,
one, to speak frankly, wishes ones self
anywhere else.
Mamma Cavil is placid soul who does
not seem to feel the weight of the family
grumbIes In the language of the market
place, she unloads on the cook, who is to
do the Cavils bare justice, as literally paid
as criticised. Mamma Cavil cannot under
stand why "that woman" Cor "that man,
since Papa Cavils theory that no woman
can rightly comprehend the noble art, has
more than once taken shape in cook of
the gifted sex) will broil snipe to much,
told over and over, as she has been, to be
careful; or she plaintively wishes that Papa
Cavil would talk to the cook and tell her
not to make her Bavarian cream so thick,
Bavarian cream ought to barely be able
to stand alone, says Mamma Cavil, who
understands, like every Cavil, all the Yir-
tues of the perfect dish:
cannot recall but one time at the Ca
wills truly hospitable board that we did not
talk about what we are eating; that was the
time the house caught fire just as We sat
down.
How different at the Chester6elds! They
do not always have so good a cook as the
lavish Cavils, often Mamma Chesterfield
who was not born a cook, but has achieved
cookery by dint painstaking and study, has
made the sweets and the salad herself, and
not always to her own satisfaction; but you
would never dream that they were not to the
content Of all the others. If the Chesteg-
fields cannot praise they say nothing. And
| have been told by no less authority than
the "second girl" of the Chesterfields (they
do not display butler, like the Gavilsj
that they never, as Marie expressed it, "talk
about the victuals" If anything is good
or is made by Mamma Chesterfield her hus
band, who is still her loyeF, praises Il, ant
generally On the Dhesterfelds' table there
/ is plenty to praise. The 0hesterGelds are
not celebrated as wits, but somehow w
laugh great deal at their feasts and th'
talk never flags. For one thing, each talk
| er is made to feel that he interests the
1 others