t--that my eye lights up on the appearance of a tray of French
pastry. I admit gladly, however, my love of onions, whether they come
hissing from the skillet, or lie in their first tender whiteness. They
are at their best when they are placed on bread and are eaten largely at
midnight after society has done its worst.

A fine dinner is lost within me. A quail is but an inferior chicken--a poor
relation outside the exclusive hennery. Terrapin sits low in my regard,
even though it has wallowed in the most aristocratic marsh. Through such
dinners I hack and saw my way without even gaining a memory of my progress.
If asked the courses, I balk after the recital of the soup. Indeed, I am so
forgetful of food, even when I dine at home, that I can well believe that
Adam when he was questioned about the apple was in real confusion. He had
or he had not. It was mixed with the pomegranate or the quince that Eve had
sliced and cooked on the day before.

A dinner at its best is brought to a single focus. There is one dish
to dominate the cloth, a single bulk to which all other dishes are
subordinate. If there be turkey, it should mount from a central platter.
Its protruding legs out-top the candles. All other foods are, as it were,
privates in Caesar's army. They do no more than flank the pageant. Nor may
the pantry hold too many secrets. Within reason, everything should be
set out at once, or at least a gossip of its coming should run before.
Otherwise, if the stew is savory, how shall one reserve a corner for the
custard? One must partition himself justly--else, by an over-stowage at the
end, he list and sink.

I am partial to picnics--the spreading of the cloth in the woods or beside
a stream--although I am not avid for sandwiches unless hunger press me.
Rather, let there be a skillet in the company and let a fire be started!
Nor need a picnic consume the day. In summer it requires but the late
afternoon, with such borrowing of the night as is necessary for the
journey home. You leave the street car, clanking with your bundles like an
itinerant tinman. You follow a stream, which on these lower stretches, it
is sad to say, is already infected with the vices of the city. Like many a
countryman who has come to town, it has fallen to dissipation. It shows the
marks of the bottle. Further up, its course is cleaner. You cross it in the
mud. Was it not Christian who fell into the bog because of the burden on
his back? Then you climb a