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THE AMENITIES OF THE TABLE

Fastidiousness, in any regard, is a misfortune, as two-thirds of mankind have no such word in their dictionary. But in matters of the table we claim for every human being a large margin of license as to peculiarities of taste. Now helping at table is a science. To tact and skill your helper must needs add benevolence. He or she must be capable of comprehending that too large a slice, or too brimming a spoonful, may save the trouble of helping twice, in more ways than one, as it may effectually destroy the appetite. Your helper must not suppose that safely to land a piece of meat on the plate, instead of the table-cloth, his or her duty is done; on the contrary, the boundary line between squash and spinach, cranberry sauce and cauliflower, may be distinctly defined with advantage to many stomachs and palates. Nor must your helper close his or her eyes to the fact that some specified joint, or bone, or slice, may be disagreeable, through some unexplainable though very decided antipathy. Nor must he or she disdain to be informed, if ignorant of the fact, that a bit of butter has a better relish if it be not flattened down on your plate, after the manner of an apothecary spreading a plaster. Then gravy is undoubtedly a meritorious liquid when one has a confidential physician, and money enough to fee him; but as this is not always the case, one may be pardoned for not wishing to have it taken for granted that it is to be soused over his food, without permission. Once I saw a philanthropic carver. His patience and assiduity were beyond all praise; but in an evil day, in a philosophical mood, inspecting him too closely with admiring eyes, I discovered the fatal spring of his amiability. It was only a blind for the secretion of his favorite titbits till, his labors over, the delicious process of mastication should commence for him! That's what comes of looking too closely into things. It has happened to me before.

The Smiths believe that edibles were made to eat; and that digestion is a humbug invented by the doctors; and that milk and cider, and pastry and vinegar, and candy and raisins, and flapjacks and pickles, and jellies, can be eaten in successive strata at any hour in the twenty-four, and in any condition of body or mind, and repose quietly together like "the Happy Family." The Smiths believe in getting up in the middle of the night to eat and then going to bed upon it; they believe in taking a bath alike on a full or an empty stomach, and they utterly despise exercise. If they are sick, it is never on account of any of these barbaric heresies.

Now, the Joneses, having studied physiology, look upon food as a necessary evil. No Rabbi could more utterly sniff down pork. Grease in every form is tabooed; preserves and pastry sent to Coventry, or only set before company, who have an undoubted right to kill themselves if fashion requires it. The Joneses, when helping you at table, always prefix the offered morsel with, Pray take it, it is so healthful; or, It will assist your digestion; or, It is an excellent corrective; till the association between potatoes and physic, meat and medicine, is so intimate, that one ceases to regard these edibles in the light of food. You are cautioned against veal because of necessity it must be young meat; against fish, lest it may aggravate a possible scrofulous tendency; against tea, because the leaves may have been dried on copper; against milk, because you are unacquainted with the pedigree of the cow from whence it came. Bread is microscopically inspected for imaginary adulterations, and after all these precautions the timid Joneses, restricted to the simplest forms of two or three permissible and monotonous eatables, swallow even these nervously, and with an eye to the undertaker; and if attacked by headache, submit to it meekly, as a penance for some unknown infringement of nature's law.

Now the Adamses believe in quantity, not quality. An ounce of paving-stones is as good as an ounce of mutton; in other words, you may eat your grandmother with impunity, if you only confine yourself to a small piece, and are jolly over it. Luckily for butchers, confectioners, grocers, doctors, and sextons, each of these hobbies finds its followers.

I believe in eating. The person who affects to despise it either comforts himself with private bites, or is unfitted by disease to eat at all. It does not disenchant me, as it does some, to see "a woman eat." I know that the dear creatures cannot keep up their plumpness on saw-dust, or the last "Lady's Book." I look at them as the future mothers of healthy little children; and I say mentally, Eat, my dears, and be satisfied; but be sure that you take a good walk after you have digested your food. Still there may be limits to one's tolerance even in this regard. The other morning, at a hotel breakfast, I had been contemplating with great interest a fair creature, who took her seat opposite to me, in all the freshness of a maiden's morning toilette. Smooth hair, tranquil brow, blue eyes, and a little neat white collar finishing off a very pretty morning-robe; and here you will permit me to remark that, if women did but know it, but they don't, and never will, a ball-room toilette is nothing to a neat breakfast dress. Well, my fairy read the bill of fare, while I admired the long eyelashes that swept her cheek. Straightway she raised her pretty head, and lisped this order to the colored waiter at her elbow:

"John! Coffee, Fried Pigs' Feet, Fried Oysters, Omelette, Pork Steak."

MANY MEN OF MANY MINDS

It is very curious with what different eyes different people may look upon the same object. Not long since a lady and gentleman in travelling arrived at the hotel of one of our largest watering-places just at the dinner-hour. The lady, preferring a warm meal to an elaborate toilette, proposed going in "just as they were." Seating themselves in the places designated by that important personage, the head waiter, they inspected the tempting bill of fare, gave their orders, and bided their time, longer or shorter, for their completion; the hotel being overcrowded, it proved to be longer. The lady solaced herself by reviewing the guests. Presently, touching her companion's arm, she exclaimed: "Look! did you ever see a more beautiful woman? Look at her throat, and the poise of her head, and her lovely profile. See! how she smiles! hasn't she a lovely mouth?" "Pshaw!" replied the gentleman, "I dare say she's well enough, but do you suppose that boiled mutton I ordered will ever arrive?"

The other day a beautiful child came into an omnibus with its nurse. It commenced smiling at all the passengers, pointing its tiny forefinger at this one and that, by way of making acquaintance. One old gentleman in the far comer responded by a series of signals with a red-silk pocket handkerchief, to which the social little baby made ready response. Another gentleman near, upon whose newspaper the smiling child laid its hand with trusting fearlessness, looked over his spectacles at it with a frown, gave an ugly grunt, and shortly turned his back, to prevent a repetition of the familiarity.

"How did you like the Rev. Mr. – 's sermon?" asked a gentleman of another, as they were leaving the church. "Solid gold, every word of it," replied he; "sound doctrine eloquently presented." "Strange!" replied the querist; "for my own part, I was so disgusted, that I could with difficulty keep my seat." "What! a minister raise a smile on the faces of his audience in such a solemn place! I wonder what my old pastor, Dr. Dry-Starch would have thought of such a proceeding! He always taught us that this was a solemn world; and that the man who laughed in it might very likely be laughing over the very spot where in time he might be buried."

"How do you like Mr. Theophilus Tennant's new novel?" asked one lady of another. "Well, if you want my honest opinion," replied the latter, "I consider it a shallow, egotistical, inflated affair, whatever paid critics may assert to the contrary." "Possible?" exclaimed the querist; "why, I was so delighted with it that I had serious thoughts of addressing a letter of thanks to the owner for the pleasure he had afforded me, although I never saw or spoke to him."

"What a splendid specimen of a man!" exclaimed Miss Twenty to Mrs. Thirty-five. "It makes one feel stronger and better to be in the same room with him." "Heavens!" exclaimed the matron; "I can think of nothing when I see him but a great, lumbering, overgrown, Newfoundland dog. A man with so much surplus body to look after can't have much time for anything else."

And so we might multiply instances ad infinitum (which is about all the Latin I know). For my own part I don't quarrel with that diversity of taste which finds pretty wives for ugly husbands, fine, smart husbands for silly women, full congregations for prosy ministers, overflowing audiences for flat lecturers, and a reading parish, notwithstanding her faults, for Fanny Fern.

MY NOTION OF A WALKING COMPANION

Of all small miseries, an uncongenial walking companion is the most annoying. Some people take a walk as they would study the multiplication table. It is a necessary performance, to be got over as soon as possible. I am not alluding to that class of human oyster, but to those who, after close application, or the exhausting wear and fret of everyday life, feel as though the four walls about them were gradually contracting, and their chance for breath growing fainter and fainter; to whom fresh air and the blue sky are as necessary as is dew and sunshine to flowers; and like them, without which, they as certainly droop and die; – such will understand what I mean by that misused term —a walk. Not a dawdle, not a feminine "calling" tour; nor an errand of any sort, for any purpose under heaven, that can be construed into business; but a dreamy lounge, irrespective of anything but the cool feel of the air on the heated temples, and the great, ceaseless, murmuring wave of life beating against the shore of time, bearing you and others on its bosom wheresoever God willeth. People pass you like moving shadows, you hear the pleasant hum of their voices, but do not know in your somnambulistic mood whether they are familiar faces or not. You only thank God for unfettered limbs, and fresh air, and motion; beyond that, for the time being, you desire to know nothing. Ah, then– to be unexpectedly linked to some human fidget! Whose limbs jerk this way and that, as if they were pulled by invisible wires; who goes first fast, then slow; then pulls you up with a short jerk to look at something; who bothers you with infinitesimal small talk; who ceaselessly interlards inquiries which chain you remorselessly to the tug-boat of his or her ideas, without leave of mental absence for one reprieving moment; and all this very likely accompanied with the most friendly and amiable intentions on the part of your entertainer (?). To say "No" and "Yes" recklessly – and laugh in the wrong place, and go home a million times more weary than when you started, beside feeling that you have hopelessly excluded yourself from the list of sane human beings – that's what I call misery.

But, ah! the ecstatic bliss of walking with one who thinks with you, as he moves dreamily on without speech – to be free to utter or to be silent, and no offence given or taken. To be allowed to wander leagues off, without fear of being rudely jerked back to time, at any unpropitious moment.

To turn this corner and that, by some mutual magnetic understanding, that you smile at afterward, when you come to think of it, as strangely funny and agreeable. To reach your own door-step as rested and refreshed, and with as cool and tranquil a brow, as if your own mother had sung you to sleep with the old-time nursery lullaby. To go back with fresh heart and spirit, to take up your burden of duty where weary nature had lain it hopelessly down. That's my kind of "walk."

There are certain persons whom to meet is like opening the window of a close apartment on a delicious June day. The first breath is an inspiration. You throw back your locks from your heated forehead, and your weary eyes, and ask nothing but to sit down and let this soother minister to you. All your cares, and frets, one by one creep away, and a new life and vigor seem infused into every nerve and muscle. You are not the same creature that you were ten minutes before. You are ready after all to do valiant battle with life, though you had supposed yourself quite surrendered to its everyday, petty, and harassing tyrant necessities. Exuberant animal strength must needs carry with it hopefulness and courage; and they whose nerves have been strained and weakened by past trouble, welcome the breezy, fresh influence of such, like Heaven's own dew and sunshine. It is a tonic, the blessing of which the unconscious giver knows not how to appreciate perhaps, but oh how invaluable to the receiver! A soulful face, an exultant word – a light, springing step! We raise our weary eyes first in wonder, then in admiration; and the sympathetic chord thus struck – the brow clears, the eyes brighten, and life seems – not the curse we morbidly thought it – but the blessing God intended it.

MEN TEACHERS IN GIRLS' SCHOOLS

I am inclined to think, with all due deference to the powers that be, that male teachers are not best for young girls. It takes a woman, who understands all the witcheries of the sex, and off whom they glance harmless, like water off a turtle's back, to deal with these young kittens; they have more fun than geography can absorb, and are not to be feruled like a great cub of a boy, whose whole future life will be license after jacketdom, as decreed by society and the laws; while a severe woman-discipline surely awaits the most frolicsome girl, beginning from the moment when she first learns what her heart is made of, till death stills its yearnings.

And yet I pity a male teacher of girls, whose studied dignity is in a second dethroned by a single pantomimic gesture of some bright-eyed young flirt, who feels her power without yet being old enough to understand it, and with an instinctive coquetry gets on his blind side, turning all his foreordained frowns into ill-suppressed smiles. How can he box those little round ears? How can he disfigure those soft, white palms? How can he – sending all the other pupils home – trust himself, after school, alone with those bright eyes, to put them through a subduing tear process? Ten to one the "subduing" is on the other side!

Said I to a little girl, not many mornings since, who was getting ready for school, "Why do you put on that bright new dress to go, when your old brown one would do as well?" "Oh," was her reply, "I haven't got my lesson to-day, and of course I must look pretty." There's fourteen-year-old female knowledge of human nature for you! Imagine a boy putting on his best jacket for such a purpose.

There must be discipline, that's certain; but, in my opinion, a man's head must be gray, not brown or black, if he would enforce it; his blood must be cold and sluggish, and his ear deaf to the charmer, charm she never so cunningly, or, certes, his magisterial chair will be set at naught. Don't I know! Answer me, thou now "Reverend" gentleman, who once kept me after school for a reprimand, and spent the precious moments rolling my curls over your fingers, while my comrade was bursting off her hooks and eyes as she peeped through the key-hole. Not that I uphold it, but every animal naturally fights with the weapons a good Providence has given it – and somehow or other I had found that out; though whether France was bounded south by Rhode Island or not was still a mystery that I was not in a hurry to solve.

Still, for all that, I pity a male teacher who is set to the impossible task of making girls "behave." I should pity them more, did I not know that they keep them in school about four or five hours longer than they ought. Did I not know what they know, but will persist practically in ignoring, that the fun has got to come out somehow, or turn to poison in the blood, and that if teachers won't give it whizzing time out of school, they must needs have it fly in their faces in school. I should pity them more, did I not, every day, see their pupils staggering home under a pile of stupidly written school-books, fit only to kindle the kitchen fire – thank goodness their little beaux sometimes save their arms from dislocation, by gallantly carrying them home for them. Do I approve of boy-beaux? Why not? Don't every rosebud draw its humming-bird? Did not God make them both for this harmless, innocent delight? You had your boy-beaux, madam; I had mine, by the score. Only teach your daughter to love you well enough to conceal nothing, however minute, from you; only show her that you have a heart, and don't want her to pluck out her's, and my word for it, no harm will come of her "boy-beaux." It is your repression that does the mischief – your ignoring your own youth and hers. The child who has leave to pluck the apple often leaves it untouched, undesired, on the tree.

Meantime our male teacher stands there, with his hands in his pockets, waiting to see what is to be done with him. Well, his pockets are the best place for his hands when he is keeping a girls' school; and with this advice I leave him, until he is sixty or so, when, if he chooses to open a girls' school, I promise him at least, that he will not go to sleep during the services.

Now let no conservative accuse me of upholding school rebellion. It is because I do not do this that I express my preference for women teachers, both principals and assistants, for girls; having an understanding of, and impervious to, girl witcheries, whom the little rogues know, having been girls themselves, can see through them, and for whom pretty looks or dresses will never answer instead of well-digested lessons.

A Safe Amusement. – All children are fond of animal pets, but it is so difficult to manage such pets in a city that no family can indulge its children's tastes in that respect to any great extent. No one can have watched the children in the Central Park, as they gaze at and linger over the bears and tigers and strange birds, without wishing that the little zoologists had a wider field and better opportunities for pursuing the study of natural history. There ought to be a permanent collection of animals and birds in New York, in some good situation, where children and young people could have ample opportunity, under proper restrictions, to indulge their natural taste for natural history. Every hour thus employed would be a safeguard against the myriad temptations to vice and idleness which pervade the city.

MY CALL ON "DEXTER."

The other evening I went up to Fifty-sixth street to see the new stable. Mr. Bonner was out, but his horses were not. Now I didn't go to see them do their 2.40's, but to gaze at them artistically; and, of course, I wanted them to stand long enough for me to do it, which I believe is not their normal condition. I had a fancy, too, for inspecting them through the bars of their respective doors; for, you see, my nerves had been thrown a little out of gear by a huge blood-hound, that made for me as I was entering the stable-yard, but who, in consideration of my being a Ledger contributor, let me off easy in my boots.

Well, the first thing that struck my New England bred eyes was the perfect neatness and polish and beauty, of every inch of floor and ceiling in that stable. A place for everything, and everything in its place, and Mrs. Bonner nothing to do with it either! Shining harness, shining vehicles, big wheels and small seats, and nothing to hold on to – but the natty reins; a perfectly awful reflection to me, but then Mr. Bonner's arm is an arm! On the wall was something the size of a full moon; red, with a fanciful oak frame. It looked like a huge pincushion, and sure enough it was. Stuck full of wooden pins, to fasten the blankets of those horses round their wicked, strong necks. If it hadn't been for that blood-hound, which I heard sniffing round after me from the outside, I should have inspected it more carefully; but it was fastened to the wall near the door, and – well, I thought I'd pass on to see Dexter. My dear! your new seal-skin sack isn't softer, browner, nor more lovely than that creature's skin. And as to his tail, your latest "switch" is nothing to it! Mr. Bonner not being present to Rarey-fy him, he kicked out his hind leg at me in a very suggestive manner; so, with an Oh, gracious! I requested to have his door closed, for there was a glitter in his eye which was not at all Scriptural. Besides, I once flew through Harlem Lane behind him, and didn't get the color back into my lips for a week after. To compose myself I passed on to Lantern, the Grandpa of the stable, though I have known Grandparents rather frisky in my day. He was reposing on his laurels, and turned round his head to me as if to ask, Why don't you? Alas! I have yet to earn them, and unlike him, I have to pin on my own blanket, and comb my own hair, and buy my own shoes; that's why I don't, old Lantern.

Then I went to see Startle, as if I needed startling any more, when I had been muttering paternosters ever since I saw that horrid blood-hound. Well, Startle is a beauty, and he knew it too. Just like a piece of satin, with his tail sweeping the floor. After I had looked at the whole ten, I said to myself, if ever a man earned the right to all these beautiful creatures, Robert Bonner has, from the time he first began to set types in a printing office, down, or rather up, to the present day. Every proud moment that he enjoys them, in or out of that handsome stable, he is fairly entitled to; and he is entitled to that blood-hound, and I wouldn't rob him of that for the wide world!

Ladies "Without an Object." – Ladies often give as a reason why they do not take exercise, "Oh, I don't like to go out without an object." Now nothing could prove more clearly their deplorable physical condition than this remark; since, to a well-organized frame, motion and fresh air are positive daily necessities; irrespective of any "object," save the cool play of the wind on the temples, and the healthful glow which follows a brisk walk. Medicine is a joke to it. No doctor, be his diploma ever so pretentious, could effect with simple means a more magical result. Considered only as "a beautifier," we marvel that the female portion of the community neglect it. A little chilliness in the air? A little sprinkling of rain? A high wind? An inability to display a fine dress? What puerile reasons for growing sallow, irritable, and sick.