There are
superstitions of the table that ought to be broken through. Why must you
always have cake in your closet? why need you feel undone to entertain a
guest with no cake on your tea-table? Do without it a year, and ask
yourselves if you or your children, or any one else, have suffered
materially in consequence.
"Why is it imperative that you should have two or three courses at every
meal? Try the experiment of having but one, and that a very good one,
and see if any great amount of suffering ensues. Why must social
intercourse so largely consist in eating? In Paris there is a very
pretty custom. Each family has one evening in the week when it stays at
home and receives friends. Tea, with a little bread and butter and cake,
served in the most informal way, is the only refreshment. The rooms are
full, busy, bright,--everything as easy and joyous as if a monstrous
supper, with piles of jelly and mountains of cake, were waiting to give
the company a nightmare at the close.
"Said a lady, pointing to a gentleman and his wife in a social circle of
this kind, 'I ought to know them well,--I have seen, them every week for
twenty years.
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