ration, as
it ought, for nothing is so destructive of health and mental tone as
the snatching of a mid-day meal at a lunch counter from a bill of fare
prepared by God knows whom. Mr. Russell said that if it took time to
buy a horse, it ought to take at least equal time and care to select the
fodder that was to make a human being wretched or happy. Indeed, a man
who didn't give his mind to what he ate wouldn't have any mind by-and-by
to give to anything. This sentiment had the assent of the table, and was
illustrated by varied personal experience; and a deep feeling prevailed,
a serious feeling, that in ordering and eating the right sort of lunch a
chief duty of a useful day had been discharged.

It must not be imagined from this, however, that the conversation was
about trifles. Business men and operators could have learned something
about stocks and investments, and politicians about city politics.
Mademoiselle Vivienne, the new skirt dancer, might have been surprised
at the intimate tone in which she was alluded to, but she could have got
some useful hints in effects, for her judges were cosmopolitans who had
seen the most suggestive dancing in all parts of the world. It came out
incidentally that every one at table had been "over" in the course of
the season, not for any general purpose, not as a sightseer, but to look
at somebody's stables, or to attend a wedding, or a sale of etchings, or
to see his bootmaker, or for a little shooting in Scotland, just as one
might run down to Bar Harbor or Tuxedo. It was only an incident in a
busy season; and one of the fruits of it appeared to be as perfect a
knowledge of the comparative merits of all the ocean racers and captains
as of the English and American stables and the trainers. One not
informed of the progress of American life might have been surprised to
see that the fad is to be American, with a sort of patronage of things
and ways foreign, especially of things British, a large continental
kind of attitude, begotten of hearing much about Western roughing it,
of Alaska, of horse-breeding and fruit-raising on the Pacific, of the
Colorado River Canon. As for stuffs, well yes, London. As for style, you
can't mistake a man who is dressed in New York.

The wine was a white Riesling from California. Docstater said his
attention had been called to it by Tom Dillingham at the Union, who had
a ranch somewhere out there. It was declared to be sound and palatable;
you know what y