The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-12-23
THE MORNING NEWS, FRIDAY, DECEMBER %, 1898.

they have been banishe /; their modern
extensions clipped or folded. shorn of their
leaves and luster, and sold for a song,
on the anything-to-ge ,-them-out-of-t the
way priciple. Some are now mere ironing
tables, swathed in mething of coarser
texture than table1cloths. and subject to
the constant thurhp and bang of the IRON,
scared and snagged in places, denuded of
dignity. Others are tailors' and dress
makers cutting-out boards, or transform
ed into prosaic dressers and kitchen stands,
others again. dwarfed and metamoronosed
beyond recognition are relegated to out
door suburban beer gardens
and beach resorts, exposed
to the ravages of the weather; rained on,
sun-scorched, banged about by the wind, a
situation where they can have but bitter
recollection of the prominence they once
enjoyed and abused; but wherever they
are. and however they got there, the
boarding house mistress is well rid OF
them. and the emancipated boarders feed
from their Vaccinations, sing hallelulah.
Some of these elongated tables, be il whis-
pered, are in careful storage, sent thither
by fond owners, boarding house keepers,
who entertain the hope that they will
some day come back in fashion again,
but they never will. That is settled; both
the people who can afford to board, and
the people who have to board because they
have no money, the too well grounded in
destestaton of the long table and its work
iugs and too pronounced in Partially for
the small tables ever to give the table
d hote style of provisioning the merest
vestige of footing. 1t is banshed In toto,
except from the out-of-town summer
boarding house. and from those behind
the-age city obstetrics, either too crippled
as TO table napery and furnishings to make
the venture, or the too rowed 10 old-style
conservatism TO get in line with progress.
And found to inveigh against the small Ia
BILE and put in a plea for its predecessor.
The new order of dining room is too uni
formly formal, and too self-contained and
uneventfully family to suit them, and
they purposely go out TO Bohemian places
Just to sit side by side with the other din
ers, in an easy jolity of Intercourse that
reminds of old times.
Whether the abolition of the long table
terminated in the thought of some insen-
ious and tactful landlady, or grew out OF
the oft-reiterated request for private board
on the part of applicants, is not clear. The
innovation probably cropped out of the OBJ
vious need for a wedding out and parting
of the guests, as the city grew in size
and diversity, and it became more and
more difficult to reconcile the various
grades and needs and tempers of the
house inmates. Whatever its origin, this
grouping of the guests into subdivisions
of twos and threes, either of congenial or
associated relationship, although involv-
ing a first outlay and cost, was, in re-
atty, solid money in the pocket of the
house mistress, for traits and agencies that
were a perpetual menace, thorn in the
flesh, to reach other; and to the well-beins,
when tried in the crucible of three-times-a-
day intercourse, became manageable
enough when separated. Then, too, the
people 10 whom small things mean so
much, the people ever on the lookut for
these small things were cut off from the
chance to compare notes, to say nothing
of the fewer opportunities and temptations
offered for gossip small talk, and fault
finding that come in with the small table
dynasty.