To eat, _really_ to eat, one must eat alone, with a soft
light, with simple furniture, an easy dress, and a single dish, at a
time. Hours of bliss! Hours of virtue! for what is more virtuous than to
be conscious of the blessings of a bountiful Nature? A good eater must
be a good man; for a good eater must have a good digestion, and a good
digestion depends upon a good conscience.
But to our tale. If we be dull, skip: time will fly, and beauty will
fade, and wit grow dull, and even the season, although it seems, for the
nonce, like the existence of Olympus, will nevertheless steal away. It
is the hour when trade grows dull and tradesmen grow duller; it is the
hour that Howell loveth not and Stultz cannot abide; though the first
may be consoled by the ghosts of his departed millions of _mouchoirs_,
and the second by the vision of coming millions of shooting-jackets. Oh,
why that sigh, my gloomy Mr. Gunter? Oh, why that frown, my gentle Mrs.
Grange?
One by one the great houses shut; shoal by shoal the little people sail
away. Yet beauty lingers still. Still the magnet of a straggling ball
attracts the remaining brilliants; still a lagging dinner, like a
sumpter-mule on a march, is a mark for plunder.
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