of the men and women who labored, of the
place, of the kind of soil, of the special contribution of the native
earth, come with the trademark or the brand. And so we all live
mechanically, from shop to table, without contact, and irreverently.

May we not once in the year remember the earth in the food that we eat?
May we not in some way, even though we live in town, so organize our
Christmas festival that the thought of the goodness of the land and its
bounty shall be a conscious part of our celebration? May we not for once
reduce to the very minimum the supply of manufactured and sophisticated
things, and come somewhere near, at least in spirit, to a "Christmas
husbandly fare?"

Yet, Thomas Tusser would not confine his husbandly fare to the Christmas
time. In another poem, he gives us "The farmer's daily diet," in which
the sturdy products are still much the same, secured and prepared by
those who partake. All this may be little applicable literally in our
present living, and yet I think it is easily possible, as certainly it
is very desirable, to develop a new attitude toward the table fare,
avoiding much unnecessary and insignificant household labor and lending
an attitude of good morality to the daily sustenance.

Much of our eating and feasting is a vicious waste of time, and also of
human energy that might be put to good uses. One can scarcely conceive
how such indirect and uncomfortable and expensive methods could have
come into use. Perhaps they originated with persons of quality in an
aristocratic society, when an abundance of servants must be trained to
serve and when distinctions in eating were a part of the distinction in
rank. But to have introduced these laborious and unintelligent methods
into hotels, where persons tarry for comfort and into homes that do not
need to maintain an extrinsic appearance, is a vain and ludicrous
imitation. The numbers of courses, with more service than food, that one
often meets at the table d'hote of the frequented hotels abroad, are
most exasperating to one who values time and has a serious purpose in
travel and a rightful care for the bodily apparatus. Here is the
performance--it was nothing more than a performance, consisting in
repeated changing of all the dishes, the removing of every fragment of
edibles, and in passing very small separate parcels of food--that it was
my lot to endure on an otherwise happy day in a hotel that had little
else to distinguish it:

Co