The times., 1899-10-08
The BauQuet.

The Banquet.
There is on the editorial page of recent
issue of a New York paper, discus
sion of dinners. The ordinary, common
place, necessary dinner is not the subject
of this article, but the banquet which
is given in honor of some person or occa-
sion. This banquet the writer considers
barbarous, and reminds us that our name
for drinking glass, ''tumbler," dates from
the time when fagon was made so that
it would not stand upright and must be
drained whenever filed. This latter state
ment is not exactly accurate. The wine
cups of some ancient peoples, it is true,
were horns which had to be emptied be-
fore they could be set down; and some
of these were richly ornamented and
beautifully polished and carved But the
glass which gave its name to our COM
mon drinking glass was quite another
thing. 1t was und-bottomed affair,
weighted so that no matter in what posi-
sion it was set down. it would right itself.
Small "tumbIers'' OF this fashion are still
sold as souvenirs in some European towns,
and the only way in which they can be
made to stand in any but an upright posi-
tion is to place them upside down, resting
on their rims This kind of glass may
have been the invention of some thrifty
man, who did not wish to waste his liquor,
even if his guests were too tipsy to handle
their cups properly. At any rate, it was
in use for some time, and until quite re-
Gently the modern lumber" was for no
particular reason made with a double
thickness of glass at the bottom and
thinner sides and rim. The shape was a
reminiscence of the older glass, the real
tumbler of acrobatic accomplishments
1t is hardly more accurate to speak of
the modern banquet as barbarous, on ac-
count OF its descent from earlier feasts,
than to assume that the innocent glass Of
drinking water partakes of the nature Of its
bibulous ancestors. Some OF the older in
stincts of mankind have to be modified aud
almost blotted out with the march of civ
ilization, but some OF them may be refined
and retained, all the more intense for the
added range of sympathy and association.
The dinner giving impulse is one of these.
From time immemorial man has invited his
friend whom he delighted 10 honor to share
meal with him. In the earliest times this
was sign of trust, since those who sat
down TO eat together were supposed TO be
friends, and did not need to be on their
guard against one another. There was a
hygienic reason il il, too, for no meal
eaten in the constant fear of being stabbed
in the back or poisoned during the feast
would be likely 10 prove digestible. Away
back in the prehistoric, undated beginnings
of things. it may be that this custom OF
preserving the hour OF meals for the COM
panionship of family and friends was an
outgrowth of natural selection. When an
archy reigned, such an arrangement was
| not only natural, but inevitable.
So, through countless generations, the
! modern dinner-table has been evolved; and
in place of the savage's raw meat and
fruits and nuts. We have the products of
all the -of-the-way corners OF the
| earth, gathered and combined by the skill
full hands of a French Chef into thing
which is as complex and admirable in its
way as painting or poem. And Just as
the art of cookery has been refined and
Il
made Infinitely complex, and the taste OF
! man has kept pace with it, so the simple
impulse to hospitality has become refined
! and complicated. There is good deal of
sham hospitality in the world-the sham
must always accompany the true-but
there is none too much of the thing itself
| All good things must be outgrowths of
some natural and simple impulse, and the
impulse of a kindly man, when he meets
a friend, is always to ask him somewhere
to dinner-to his home, if he has one;
otherwise to the club, or to some place
where there is at least a semblance of the
wonted homelike feeling. There is a sig
nifcance in this which should not be over
| looked. We Americana have been told, by
some etherealized people who did not ex-
actly know the bearings in a confused
world, that the mere needs of the body
were of little consequence. But the fact
remains that wholesome living must in
| eIude the satisfaction OF every right,
natural impulse. in some form or other;
and our social life will be better, and our
future more secure, for all the hospitality,
public or private, that can be gotten
into it.
President Patton of Princeton, has been
at unnecessary pains to explain that the
gentleman who has given one hundred
| thousand dollars to the university, with