" What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well touch'd, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air ? He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft is not unwise."

John Milton.

The desirable thing, in the words of the poet, is a "neat repast." There is not only an art of preparing a delicate feast, but an art of eating one, and this latter art is not so advanced as it might be. Method in eating is all-important, and the only method is the English, for the English eat with ease and without embarrassing their neighbors. Dubois, who had long experience at the court of Berlin, says, in his "Cuisine de Tous les Pays," that it seems difficult and embarrassing to eat according to any method except the English, but as he probably had seen many Germans eating differently, he proceeds to expound the English method, the whole theory and practice of which consists in using the fork always with the left hand and the knife and spoon with the right. The fork is to be held with the index finger stretched out so as to maintain it in an almost horizontal position. Nothing seems clumsier than to grip the fork with clenched fist and to hold it perpendicular as the Germans often do. Nothing is less "English you know" than to convey food to the mouth with the knife or to touch fish with a knife. When you are not using your knife and fork, lay them on your plate with the handle of the one turned to the right and the handle of the other turned to the left, ready to be taken up at once. The knife and fork should be laid on the plate, the one crossing the other, only when you have finished eating altogether. A case when the fork may be used with the right hand is in eating fish. These points seem so simple and elementary that it would appear useless to put them down in writing, and yet a little experience of tables d'hote, particularly on the European continent, will show that there are still many well-dressed people in this world who eat like savages and not at all according to the English method.

At a table d'hote in Hanover I remember once sitting beside a German lady, a banker's wife, who borrowed my scarf-pin to pick her teeth with after dinner. This was not only a proof of bad manners, but also of hygienic imprudence, because a metal toothpick spoils the enamel of the teeth. For toothpicking purposes a lentisk stick is best, though a quill is not harmful, as Martial says in one of his epigrams:

"Lentiscum melius : sed si tibi frondea cuspis Defuerit, dentes, penna, levare potes."

In order to be comfortably seated at table the chair must be neither too high nor too low, and above all it should not be so heavy that it needs an effort to move it an inch, nor should it be rough with carving that sticks into your shoulders when you lean back, or catches and tears the dresses of the women. These details also may seem unworthy of being written down, but experience has hitherto revealed to me very few reasonably constructed dining-room chairs. A wealthy New York banker recently had made in Europe some massive bronze dining-room chairs. His example is not to be commended.

The table-cloth should be laid, not directly on the table, but over a thick cotton blanket. The cloth itself should be spotlessly clean, and if this condition exist much will be pardoned; it may be pure white linen or dam-ask, or it may have a colored pattern woven or embroidered along the edges. The use of color in the pattern of table linen is by no means novel. In the miniatures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the table-cloths and the long, narrow dresser cloths are constantly represented with rose or blue stripes and borders. Some luxurious table-cloths nowadays are not only richly embroidered, but also adorned with inserted bands of lace, which give you the sensation of dining off a petticoat. Such excess is to be avoided. The starching and stiffening of table linen as practised in England is not to be recommended. The ideal table-cloth is smooth and fair to the eye; it has no obtrusive glaze; it is soft to the touch, and its folds are not hard or rigid.

As regards the nature and shape of the tables, we have already suggested the advis-ableness of rebelling against the tyranny both of tradition and of the furniture-makers of Grand Rapids (Mich.) and elsewhere. There are hints for hostesses to be found in Paul

Veronese's "Noces de Cana," and in Lippo Lippi's "Herod's Feast." Lippi's fresco in the cathedral of Prato might be reproduced easily in a Newport villa as a gastronomic tableau vivant.

A most important article absolutely necessary for happiness at table is the napkin. The napkin should be soft and ample, and absolutely devoid of glaze or starch. The English have a detestable habit of stiffening table-napkins so that they are utterly inde-tergent and therefore useless. In all the details of table-service the chief consideration is appropriateness to the end. Napkins are used to wipe the lips and the fingers, to cover the lap, and even to protect the bust. They should be fair pieces of linen of generous dimensions, say thirty-four by twenty-five inches. May Comus preserve us from the paltry six-by-nine-inch rag which some Anglo-Saxons would fain foist upon us as napkins.

The napkin will of course match the cloth, but if it is embroidered or ornamented in any way, let this decoration in no way interfere with its usefulness, and, above all things, let there be no mottoes or inscriptions "charm-ingly worked in all kinds of odd places, in one corner, or across the middle, or along 11 one or all the sides," as Mrs. Loftie suggests in her little book "The Dining-Room." "Not only are such devices pretty and appropriate," continues Mrs. Loftie, "but they may sometimes afford a subject for dinner conversation when the weather has been exhaustively discussed." Mrs. Loftie has made many excellent suggestions in her pages about laying the table, but this one is too cruel and too ironical. If people's conversational powers are so limited that they require the motto of a table napkin to help them out, it were better to prohibit conversation at table altogether, and have some one read aloud, as was the custom in the old monasteries, and also at the court of Frederick di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, who used to have Plutarch, Xenophon, and Aristotle read to him while he was at table, and thus maintained that serene frame of mind which is necessary for happiness at meals.