lacksmith's boy in hand and began his
education in the art of being a gentleman. Not only was he at perfect
ease himself but--and this is the important point--he put the
blacksmith's boy at ease.

It is worth remarking, by way of parenthesis, that Herbert's father was
a gentleman. "It is a principle of his," declared the boy, "that no man
who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began,
a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of
the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will
express itself."

The American table service is not complicated. Any intelligent person
who knows the points covered by Herbert Pocket, who knows that one
should not cut up all of his meat at the same time but mouthful by
mouthful as he needs it, that it is not customary to butter a whole
slice of bread at once nor to plaster cheese over the entire upper
surface of a cracker, can by a dint of watching how other people do it
find his way without embarrassment through even the most elaborate array
of table implements. The easiest way to acquire good table manners (or
good manners of any other kind, as far as that goes) is to form the
habit of observing how the people who manage these things most
gracefully go about it. It is best to begin early. To use one of David
Harum's expressive maxims, "Ev'ry hoss c'n do a thing better 'n' spryer
if he's ben broke to it as a colt."

Eating should be, and, as a matter of fact, is, when one follows his
usual custom, an unconscious process like the mechanical part of reading
or writing. It is only when he is trying to be a bit more formal or
fastidious than is habitual with him that a man gets tangled, so to
speak, in the tines of his fork.

Cooking is one of the fine arts. Poets, painters, sculptors, musicians,
and millionaires have always paid tribute to it as such--and so is
dining. Like a great many other arts it was first developed among royal
circles, and there was a time when the king resented the idea of a
commoner being able to dine with grace and elegance. Since then it has
become democratized, and now there are no restrictions except those
which a man places about himself. And there is no earthly (or heavenly)
reason why a man should not eat in the way which society has established
as correct, and a good many reasons why he should.

Physicians--and this is the strongest argument we know--might advance
their plea on the groun