The Mena star. (Mena, Ark.) 1898-1904, 1898-08-24
ARE WE LEARNING HOW TO EATq
Hopeful Signs That, If Realized, VIII
Make Happier People.
From the Kansas City Star.

From the Kansas City Star.
There is rumor, whisper in the
air. that comes from nowhere and
everywhere, that Americans are taking
their meals in more leasurely fashion
than formerly. Critics from foreign
parts have never been satisfied with
the American way of eating, and for a
long time we have been the subject OF
fault-fnding as to our meals A great
and innumerabe host OF psychologists
have berated MS for eating fast and
declared that dyspepsia was the child
of voracity.
The American is undoubtedly guilty
as charged, but he has an excuse. In
fixing up his great country during the
last hundred years aud more he has
been so busy that he has not had time
for his meals. He has built more new
houses, split more rails, fenced more
acres than all the rest of creation. He
has felt all along that he could hardly
spare the time for eating Hence. the
American business man who makes up
the larger part of our population is
the most rapid eater on earth. He can
beat in an eating match against time,
three best in five and repeat, any hui
man biped that ever threw leg over
a high stool in an eating house.
1t is believed by scientific people that
the present generation of Americans
eat at high speed through the influence
of heredity. This seems to be proven
bv the fact that the more American a
man is, the more generations of an
cestors he can count in the United
States, the faster he eats. The foreign
born laborer who sits in the shade of a
rock at MONDAY and eats his dinner
out of tin bucket takes his time for
IT. The millionaire native employer
eats as if pursued by something or
somebody. throws his knife and fork
after his already forgotten food and
makes his escape.
In no other country is what is con-
sidered a slow table waiter so abund-
antly blasphemed as he is in America.
1t is not because he is holding back
the desired food; it is because he is
taking time that should be devoted to
something else than the Improbable
exercise of eating
And now they say that the American
is reforming altogether, and is taking
time at the table, as an English
man or German or Frenchman or al
most any other civilized man does. If
this be true it betokens change in
the national character, perhaps in the
national destiny. 1t may be that the
American has awakened to the fact
that of raw materials-very frequently
greatest abundance in the world that
he may. ffrrGssss s his fields, gardens,
orchards, pastures, wood and streams
furnish forth such table as may not
be found elsewhere on the globe.
Perhaps he has come to the conclusion
that he will take time to contemplate
these riches.
Heaven grant that this vision of an
hour at the table may not be passing
dream. Made a reality the whole
American people would begin better
life at once.
Leisure, all the time needed to get
the best and eat 1t, what prospects un-
fold with the announcement No
more the shrill and peremptory call of
"Ten minutes for dinner" shrieked
above the crash of the appalling gong,
the clatter of knives and forks, the
thunder of flying feet of the walters,
the rattle of plates and cups and the
steady swish of descending victuals,
but, instead, time enough, ease, ele-
gance, the pleasant talk of man with
man and the pleasanter talk of man
with woman-all this would make the
world much happier than we know,
Win your battles against disease by
.n&s,,<. 0na rainnfa Ca1,rk