ked
as Kentucky's fairest product. Indiana had dishes of which Texas wotted
not, nor kilowatted either, this being before the day of electrical
cooking contrivances. Virginia, mother of presidents and of natural-born
cooks, could give and take cookery notions from Vermont. Likewise, this
condition developed the greatest collection of cooks, white and black
alike, that the world has ever seen. They were inspired cooks, needing
no notes, no printed score to guide them. They could burn up all the
cook-books that ever were printed and still cook. They cooked by ear.

And perhaps they still do. If so, may Heaven bless and preserve them!
Some carping critics may contend that our grandfathers and grandmothers
lacked the proper knowledge of how to serve a meal in courses. Let 'em.
Let 'em carp until they're as black in the face as a German carp. For
real food never yet needed any vain pomp and circumstance to make it
attractive. It stands on its own merits, not on the scenic effects.
When you really have something to eat you don't need to worry trying to
think up the French for napkin. Perhaps there may be some among us here
on this continent who, on beholding a finger-bowl for the first time,
glanced down into its pellucid depths and wondered what had become of
the gold fish. There may have been a few who needed a laprobe drawn up
well over the chest when eating grapefruit for the first time. Indeed,
there may have been a few even whose execution in regard to consuming
soup out of the side of the spoon was a thing calculated to remind you
of a bass tuba player emptying his instrument at the end of a hard
street parade.

But I doubt it. These stories were probably the creations of the
professional humorists in the first place. Those who are given real food
to eat may generally be depended upon to do the eating without undue
noise or excitement. The gross person featured in the comic papers, who
consumes his food with such careless abandon that it is hard to tell
whether the front of his vest was originally drygoods or groceries,
either doesn't exist in real life or else never had any food that was
worth eating, and it didn't make any difference whether he put it on the
inside of his chest or the outside.

Only a short time ago I saw a whole turkey served for a Thanksgiving
feast at a large restaurant. It vaunted itself as a regular turkey and
was extensively charged for as such on the bill. It wasn't though. It
was an ancien