The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1907-04-02

IN EFT it be admitted that our army Is
~ a failure, has never won VIC
h-"- tory, and never will; admitted
that our navy would have difficulty in
sweeping six combined great powers off
the sea; admitted that we cannot act
up to the French standard, or trade
up to the German, or hustle up to the
American, or cheat up to the Greek. Still
we cherish our little pride and prejudice
The Englishman regards himself and is
generally regarded as the best dressed
man In the world He also plumes him
self on having the best table manners,
writes Clarence Rock in the London
Chronicle. To the Frenchman may be
conceded the supremacy In the preparation
of food, while the production of 1t lowing
to the decay of our agriculture may De
left to Siberia and Chicago.
But when it comes to the eating of food
the Englisnman asserts his supremacy,
For if the highest art be to conceal art
the highest etiquette of eating should be
the triumphant pretence that one Is not
eating at all. And here the Englshman
wins. He can eat his way through seven
course meal quite unobtrusvely. 1t was
not always so.
Lord Chesterfield, as l have been re-
minded by Philip Wellby's new edition
of the "Advice to his Son." sketches the
awkward man who 'holds his knife, fork
and spoon differently from other people,
cats with his knife to the great danger
of his mouth, picks his teeth with his
fork and puts his spoon, which has been
in his throat twenty times, into the dlshes
again. If he Is to carve, he never mis-
the Joint, but in his vain efforts TO cut
through the bone scatters the sauce In
everybodys face He generally daubs
himself with soup and grease, though his
napkin is commonly stuck through but
tonhole."
That napkin is test of table manners,
and the nice conduct of the napkin caught
the attention recently of the German
Emperor, who saw one of his guests tuck
ing the napkin under a chin. do you
want to be shaved?' was the imperial
question! England's supremacy-in the
matter of soup-lies in the spoon. An
Englishman is taught to take soup from
the side of the spoon. And he is the
only man on earth who energies from
soup with the white shirt front of a
blameles dinner and without the aid of a
tucked napkin. He lays the napkin across
his knees and uses it without ostentation.
Perhaps the acme of this concealment
of art was reached by the two sweet
ladies of Crawford, who thought it i'm
Il nd
an ear at hand. They used to rise up,
possess themselves each on an orange In
silence and withdraw to the privacy OF
their own rooms to indulge in sucking
orauges'
The orange is still problem In decent
eating, and have seen many people send
1t away at dessert because they do not
know the proper slicing that will lead to
the suction that will not impede converse
ton; people who will eat an orange only
in solitude. or over the leeward side of
a ship Those Crawford days were the
days of transition, the days of two
pronged forks, and the ladies went to din
ner with the "Old Bachelor" and had to
face the problem of peas. The host
shovelled his pease into his capacious
mouth with his knife-a large, round
ended knife Mrs. Gaskell saw, initiated,
survived The other ladies remembered
their table manners and missed the peas
with the two pronged forks.
That discreet conduct of the knife is the
Englishman's pride and prejudice at able.
There is no nation which lin its upper mid
die classes) reaches the English standard
for the nice conduct of the Knife, though
we are assured that in the highest cir
cles-among Amirs. Shahs, Sultans, Dukes
and millinaires-there is a beautiful uni
formity of department. Our insular In
stinct is to make the knife as inconspicu-
Gus as possible, for there is some sugges-
ton of brutality in the slicing of the bits
of corpses that are doomed to keep our
vile bodies alive.
No such feeling restraints the German
eater-and the French diner Is scarcely
more sensitive. The German who feeds in
the average restaurant will shovel his
food into his mouth with the blade of his
knife. and. when in a difficulty, will