The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-18
BE CHEERFUL AND
 POLITE AT MEALS

Don't come to the breakfast table telling everybody what a miserable night you spent--couldn't sleep wink! Suppose you didn't. Have you any right to plaster your misery over ev- erybody else?
 Don't come to the dinner table in the evening detailing to the family ev- cry business worry and perplexity. every domestic trouble, making them take In along with their food the aura of your disappointment. anger and de- spondency. It's enough to have been disappointed and angry yourself with out making everybody else suffer. The man or woman who will pour out the troubles of the day at the evening meal, no matter what those troubles were. ought to be choked of and led away, to eat alone after the rest are done.
 greater sinner still is the person who sits down at the family table with grumpy. forbiddinS. don't-you Gare- speak expression Of countenance, as if he were a boss executioner and was prepared to strike on the head of any body who talked or laughed aloud while eating. There is a frightfu1 su- perstition in a few quarters that 1t is not seemly to talk and be merry while eating. but that in order to express proper thankfulness to Providence for the food put before us it Is necessary to choke that food down in solemn. surly silence. Wherever a family, for It's sins. is afflicted with this sort Of unpleasant person as one Of it's heads. you will sec the younger members of that family chilled into dead silence wherever the perscn appears. and they slide off one by one, this way and that. to some place where they can assemble and be free and merry without the presence of the family nightmare. I have sen fathers of families who were exactly of that kind who gloried in repressing all merriment among their children. and casting a pail of freez- ing silence over the family meal. The result was--pity 1t was---the children had such a dislike and dread of the presence of their father that they got away from home so soon as they were grown. and some of them fell into evil ways. The old man then blamed 1t on Providence for afiicting him specially, when the unfortunate outcome was no- thing but the consequences of his own grouty ugliness at home.
 don't know actually which is the worse transgressor, the Rrouty. dis agreeable father or the individual who talks of bodily ailments and horrible and disgusting incidents at meals. Some folk who consider themselves really we'll bred and refined will detail how they have taken medicine and what effect 1t had on them, or how this or that food disagreed with their stomaehs and other particulars that are enough to turn refined, well-bred person Inside out and upside down.
 Is 1t any wonder that nearly all the world Is dyspeptic when we consider that besides swallowing with our food quantities of chemicals that do not be- long rightly there. we must also swai- low the bad temper, coarseness, busi- ness troubles and bodily ailments of those who gather around the table to eat with us? The wonder Is that any refined. sensitive persona are left alive at all.
 No! Let us put aside while eating all that can hurt the most fastidious. Let us be merry and talk and think of pleasant matters-except that we mustn't talk with our mouths full Let us make use at table of the most re- fined and courteous manners we pos sess Let the sound of laughter rise from our board. the bright atmosphere of refined cheerfulness pervade all Let us avoid loading anything unpleasant upon those around us. Let each meal be the occasion of joy and affectlonate manifestation. So shall the children look back to their early home as to one spot on this earth where they were happy.
 JANE MOSES.