The classical theory of serving wines at a dinner is the following:

Immediately after the soup dry white wines are offered, such as French wines, Marsala, Sherry, Madeira, dry Syracuse, etc.

With the fish dry white wines are also served. With oysters Chablis is preferred.

With releve's of butcher's meat and warm entrees red wines, Burgundy or Bordeaux.

With cold entrees and other cold pieces fine white wines are served.

With the roast come the fine Bordeaux or Champagne wines, or both. With the entremets, Champagne alone. With the dessert, liqueur wines, such as Frontignan, Lunel, Alicante, Malvoisie, Port, Tokay, Lacrima-Christi, etc.

The red wines ought to be drank at a temperature of about 55 degrees Fahrenheit. White wines should always be served cold.

When a selection of wines figures on the menu in the order above indicated, the table requires to be loaded with wine-glasses, at least half a dozen by the side of each plate, and during the whole dinner the waiters are continually inserting a bottle surreptitiously between every two guests, and murmuring, as they fill the glasses, "Chateau - Lafitte, 1865," "Clos Vougeot, 1873," etc.

Now it seems to me that, among the many practices which interfere with comfort, we must note both the attendants who pass dishes over the shoulders of the guests and the attendants who help wine to the company. The handing round of dishes can be rendered less disagreeable by modifying our current ways of sitting at table. As for the custom of having an attendant to help wine, it might be abolished with advantage if men could be convinced that the drinking of many wines during one meal is a gross form of luxury, and one disastrous to the digestive organs.

The multitude of wines, like the multitude of dishes, served in succession, however carefully that succession may be ordained, wearies the palate and fatigues the stomach. If six fine wines are served in succession in the course of one repast, at least half of the number are not fully appreciated. As we advocate simplicity in the number and in the preparation of the dishes, so we recommend simplicity in the serving of the wines, for our object in dining is neither to gorge and guzzle nor yet to get drunk. When we rise from the table we wish to feel our heads clear, our papillae clean, and our tongues free, and, above all, we wish to sleep calmly, and to wake up the next morning fresh and rosy.

For my own part, I prefer to drink one wine throughout my dinner, either red Bordeaux or Burgundy, or a dry Champagne, unsophisticated by the addition of liqueurs or excess of caramel. These wines I drink poured into the glass directly out of their native bottles, and the Champagne, being of the right quality, I do not pollute by contact with ice. Really good natural Champagne should be drunk cool, but not iced. To decant Champagne, whether into jugs with an ice-receptacle in the middle, such as modern progress has invented, or into a carafe frappee, as is the custom with the less civilized French drinkers, or to freeze the bottle in the ice-pail, or to put lumps of ice into the glass, are equally barbarous operations. The only Champagne that may be iced is poor and very sweet Champagne, whose sugary taste is masked by coldness.

At a truly scientific feast, where all the conditions of success exist, both as regards the limitation of the guests to the number of the Muses as a maximum, and also as regards the perfection of the viands, both in quality and in dressing, it is easy to dispense with the attendants who would be required to help wine at an ordinary dinner. At this scientific feast each man would have his bottle.

I will even go further, and say that not only would each man have his bottle of Champagne or his bottle of whatever other wine there might be, but also each man would have his leg of mutton, his duck, his partridge, his pheasant. This method alone is truly satisfactory, because it renders envy and favoritism impossible. A partridge has only one breast, and a leg of mutton has only a few slices which are ideal. Evidently, if the partridge or the leg of mutton has to be divided between several guests, one or more of them will be sacrificed for the benefit of the other or others. This is undesirable; you do not invite people to dinner in order to subject them to martyrdom; you do not accept an invitation to dinner with a view to displaying moral qualities, such as self-abnegation. The Russians have noble views on this point. Once I was invited to dinner by a Russian gentleman, who had asked me previously if he could serve me any special dish. I begged that I might taste a certain Russian mutton. When the dinner was served a whole sheep was carried in steaming hot on the shoulders of four Tartar waiters, and I was asked to select the part that pleased me best, the whole dish being at my disposal.

So, with this question of wine, if we have wine let it be served in abundance, and let each guest have his bottle, and as many bottles as his thirst demands.

The above remarks do not apply without reserve to family life and quotidian domestic repasts ; they are addressed to gourmets and to men who wish to do honor to their friends by giving them a real dinner.

In order to feast delicately, it is perhaps necessary to be an egoist. The company of friends, or at least of one friend, is indispensable. A man cannot dine alone. But the happiness of each guest must be ministered to independently of the happiness of the others, and for that reason we advocate the service by unities - a complete dinner for each guest, so far at least as the chief dishes are concerned. This idea is not novel. For that matter, there are no novel ideas worth talking about. Tallemant des Reaux, in his "His-toriettes," relates that the French poet Mal-herbe, who flourished at the end of the sixteenth century, one day "gave a dinner to six of his friends. The whole feast consisted merely of seven boiled capons, one for each man, for he said that he loved them all equally, and did not wish to be obliged to serve to one the upper joint and to another the wing."

The smaller the dinner the better will be the chance of its being well-cooked. In these days of wealth and parade the "aristologist" craves after simplicity.

The late Mr. Walker, author of "The Original," wrote a series of papers on the "Art of Dining," which contain many good hints. Walker was a partisan of simplicity. "Common soup," he says, "made at home, fish of little cost, any joints, the cheapest vegetables, some happy and unexpensive introduction, provided everything is good in quality, and the dishes are well dressed and served hot and in succession, with their adjuncts, will insure a quantity of enjoyment which no one need be afraid to offer." 12

Thus we see that delicate eating and delicate drinking are not questions of many kinds of wines, multitudes of dishes, or great state of serving-men, but rather of fineness of the quality of all that is offered, simplicity and daintiness in its preparation, rapidity and convenience in the serving of it, and appre-ciativeness on the part of the guests.

That marvellous story-writer, Guy de Maupassant, says: "A man is a gourmet as he is a poet or an artist, or simply learned. Taste is a delicate organ, perfectible and worthy of respect like the eye and the ear. To be wanting in the sense of taste is to be deprived of an exquisite faculty, of the faculty of discerning the quality of aliments just as one may be deprived of the faculty of discerning the qualities of a book or of a work of art; it is to be deprived of an essential sense, of a part of human superiority; it is to belong to one of the innumerable classes of cripples, infirm people, and fools of which our race is composed; it is, in a word, to have a stupid mouth just as we have a stupid mind. A man who does not distinguish between a lan-gouste and a lobster, between a herring, that admirable fish that carries within it all the savors and aromas of the sea, and a mackerel or a whiting, is comparable only to a man who could confound Balzac with Eugene Sue and a symphony by Beethoven with a military march composed by some regimental band-master.