[Illustration: NO RED MEATS, BUT ONLY SEA FOODS] _Eating_ _in Two or Three_ _Languages_ _By_ _Irvin S. Cobb_ _Author of_ _"Paths of Glory, " "Those Times and These, " etc. _ _New York_ _George H. Doran Company_ COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY * * * * * TO B. B. McALPIN, ESQUIRE, WHO KNOWS A LOT ABOUT EATING * * * * * ILLUSTRATIONS No Red Meats, but Only Sea Foods. _Frontispiece_ "Herb, Stand Back! Stand Well Back to Avoid Being Splashed!" Half a Dozen Times a Night or Oftener He Travelled under Escortthrough the Room _Eating in Two or Three Languages_ On my way home from overseas I spent many happy hours mapping out acampaign. To myself I said: "The day I land is going to be a great dayfor some of the waiters and a hard day on some of the cooks. Personswho happen to be near by when I am wrestling with my first ear ofgreen corn will think I am playing on a mouth organ. My behaviour inregard to hothouse asparagus will be reminiscent of the best work ofthe late Bosco. In the matter of cantaloupes I rather fancy I shallconsume the first two on the half shell, or _au naturel_, as weveteran correspondents say; but the third one will contain about asmuch vanilla ice cream as you could put in a derby hat. [Illustration: "HERB, STAND BACK! STAND WELL BACK TO AVOID BEINGSPLASHED!"] "And when, as I am turning over my second piece of fried chicken, withVirginia ham, if H. Hoover should crawl out from under it, and, shaking the gravy out of his eyes, should lift a warning hand, I shallsay to him: 'Herb, ' I shall say, 'Herb, stand back! Stand well backto avoid being splashed, Herb. Please desist and do not bother me now, for I am busy. Kindly remember that I am but just returned from overthere and that for months and months past, as I went to and fro acrossthe face of the next hemisphere that you'll run into on the left ofyou if you go just outside of Sandy Hook and take the first turn tothe right, I have been storing up a great, unsatisfied longing for thespecial dishes of my own, my native land. Don't try, I pray you, totell me a patriot can't do his bit and eat it too, for I know better. "'Shortly I may be in a fitter frame of mind to listen to youradmonitions touching on rationing schemes; but not to-day, andpossibly not to-morrow either, Herb. At this moment I consider foodregulations as having been made for slaves and perhaps for the run ofother people; but not for me. As a matter of fact, what you may haveobserved up until now has merely been my preliminary attack--what youmight call open warfare, with scouting operations. But when theybring on the transverse section of watermelon I shall take these twotrenching tools which I now hold in my hands, and just naturally startdigging in. I trust you may be hanging round then; you'll certainlyoverhear something. ' "'Kindly pass the ice water. That's it. Thank you. Join me, won't you, in a brimming beaker? It may interest you to know that I am now on mysecond carafe of this wholesome, delicious and satisfying beverage. Where I have lately been, in certain parts of the adjacent continent, there isn't any ice, and nobody by any chance ever drinks water. Nobody bathes in it either, so far as I have been able to note. You'lldoubtless be interested in hearing what they do do with it over onthat side. It took me months to find out. "'Then finally, one night in a remote interior village, I went to anentertainment in a Y. M. C. A. Hut. A local magician came out on theplatform; and after he had done some tricks with cards andhandkerchiefs which were so old that they were new all over again, hereached up under the tails of his dress coat and hauled out a bigglass globe that was slopping full of its crystal-pure fluid contents, with a family of goldfish swimming round and round in it, as happy asyou please. "'So then, all in a flash, the answer came and I knew the secret ofwhat the provincials in that section of Europe do with water. Theyloan it to magicians to keep goldfish in. But I prefer to drink alittle of it while I am eating and to eat a good deal while I amdrinking it; both of which, I may state, I am now doing to the best ofmy ability, and without let or hindrance, Herb. '" To be exactly correct about it, I began mapping out this campaign longbefore I took ship for the homeward hike. The suggestion formed in mymind during those weeks I spent in London, when the residentpopulation first went on the food-card system. You had to have a meatcard, I think, to buy raw meat in a butcher shop, and you had to haveanother kind of meat card, I know, to get cooked meat in arestaurant; and you had to have a friend who was a smuggler or ahoarder to get an adequate supply of sugar under any circumstances. Before I left, every one was carrying round a sheaf of cards. Youdidn't dare go fishing if you had mislaid your worm card. The resolution having formed, it budded and grew in my mind when I wasup near the Front gallantly exposing myself to the sort oftable-d'hôte dinners that were available then in some of the lessertowns immediately behind the firing lines; and it kept right ongrowing, so that by the time I was ready to sail it was full sized. Enroute, I thought up an interchangeable answer for two of the oldestconundrums of my childhood, one of them being: "Round as a biscuit, busy as a bee; busiest thing you ever did see, " and the other, "Openslike a barn door, shuts like a trap; guess all day and you can't guessthat. " In the original versions the answer to the first was "A watch, "and to the second, "A corset"--if I recall aright But the jointanswer I worked out was as follows: "My face!" Such was the pleasing program I figured out on shipboard. But, as isso frequently the case with the most pleasing things in life, I foundthe anticipation rather outshone the realisation. Already I detectmyself, in a retrospective mood, hankering for the savoury _ragoûts_we used to get in peasant homes in obscure French villages, and forthe meals they gave us at the regimental messes of our own forces, where the cooking was the home sort and good honest American slangabounded. They called the corned beef Canned Willie; and the stew was knownaffectionately as Slum, and the doughnuts were Fried Holes. When theadjutant, who had been taking French lessons, remarked "What the _la_hell does that _sacré-blew_ cook mean by serving forty-fours at everymeal?" you gathered he was getting a mite tired of baked army beans. And if the lieutenant colonel asked you to pass him the Native Sonsyou knew he meant he wanted prunes. It was a great life, if youdidn't weaken--and nobody did. But, so far as the joys of the table are concerned, I think I shall beable to wait for quite a spell before I yearn for another whack atEnglish eating. I opine Charles Dickens would be a most unhappy mancould he but return to the scenes he loved and wrote about. Dickens, as will be recalled, specialised in mouth-wateringdescriptions of good things and typically British things to eat--roastsucking pigs, with apples in their snouts; and baked goose; and suetyplum puddings like speckled cannon balls; and cold game pies as biground as barrel tops--and all such. He wouldn't find these thingsprevailing to any noticeable extent in his native island now. Even thekidney, the same being the thing for which an Englishman mainly raisesa sheep and which he always did know how to serve up better than anyone else on earth, somehow doesn't seem to be the kidney it once upona time was when it had the proper sorts of trimmings and sauces to gowith it. At this time England is no place for the epicure. In peacetime Englishcooks, as a rule, were not what you would call versatile; their range, as it were, was limited. Once, seeking to be blithesome and light ofheart, I wrote an article in which I said there were only threedependable vegetables on the average Englishman's everydaymenu--boiled potatoes, boiled cabbage, and a second helping of theboiled potatoes. That was an error on my part; I was unintentionally guilty of thecrime of underestimation. I should have added a fourth to the list ofstand-bys--to wit: the vegetable marrow. For some reason, possiblybecause they are a stubborn and tenacious race, the English persist inlooking upon the vegetable marrow as an object designed for humanconsumption, which is altogether the wrong view to take of it. As afoodstuff this article hasn't even the merit that attaches to stringycelery. You do not derive much nourishment from stale celery, buteating at it polishes the teeth and provides a healthful form ofexercise that gives you an appetite for the rest of the meal. From the vegetable marrow you derive no nourishment, and certainly youderive no exercise; for, being a soft, weak, spiritless thing, itoffers no resistance whatever, and it looks a good deal like a streakof solidified fog and tastes like the place where an indisposed carrotspent the night. Next to our summer squash it is the feeblestimitation that ever masqueraded in a skin and called itself avegetable. Yet its friends over there seem to set much store by it. Likewise the English cook has always gone in rather extensively forboiling things. When in doubt she boiled. But it takes a lot ofretouching to restore to a piece of boiled meat the juicy essencesthat have been simmered and drenched out of it. Since the Englishpeople, with such admirable English thoroughness, cut down on fats andoils and bacon garnishments, so that the greases might be conservedfor the fighting forces; and since they have so largely had to dowithout imported spices and condiments, because the cargo spaces inthe ships coming in were needed for military essentials, the boileddishes of England appear to have lost most of their taste. You can do a lot of browsing about at an English table these days andcome away ostensibly filled; but inside you there will be a persistentunsatisfied feeling, all the same, which is partly due, no doubt, tothe lack of sweetening and partly due to the lack of fats, but duemost of all, I think, to a natural disappointment in the results. Inthe old times a man didn't feel that he had dined well in Englandunless for an hour or two afterward he had the comfortable gorgedsensation of a python full of pigeons. I shall never forget the first meals I had on English soil, thislatest trip. At the port where we landed, in the early afternoon of araw day, you could get tea if you cared for tea, which I do not; butthere was no sugar--only saccharine--to sweeten it with, and no richcream, or even skim milk, available with which to dilute it. Theaccompanying buns had a flat, dry, floury taste, and the portions ofbutter served with them were very homoeopathic indeed as to size andvery oleomargarinish as to flavour. Going up to London we rode in a train that was crowded and darkened. Brilliantly illuminated trains scooting across country offered anexcellent mark for the aim of hostile air raiders, you know; so ineach compartment the gloom was enhanced rather than dissipated by twotiny pin points of a ghastly pale-blue gas flame. I do not know whythere should have been two of these lights, unless it was that thesecond one was added so that by its wan flickerings you could see thefirst one, and vice versa. During the trip, which lasted several hours longer than the scheduledrunning time, we had for refreshments a few gnarly apples, purchasedat a way station; and that was all. Recalling the meals that formerlyhad been served aboard the boat trains of this road, I realised I wasgetting my preliminary dose of life on an island whose surroundingwaters were pestered by U-boats and whose shipping was needed fortransport service. But I pinned my gastronomic hopes on London, thatcity famed of old for the plenteous prodigality of its victuallingfacilities. In my ignorance I figured that the rigours of rationingcould not affect London to any very noticeable extent. A littletrimming down here and there, an enforced curtailment in thisdirection and that--yes, perhaps so; but surely nothing more serious. Immediately on arrival we chartered a taxicab--a companion and I did. This was not so easy a job as might be imagined by one who formed hisopinions on past recollections of London, because, since gasoline wascarefully rationed there, taxis were scarce where once they had beennumerous. Indeed, I know of no city in which, in antebellum days, taxis were so numerously distributed through almost every quarter ofthe town as in London. At any busy corner there were almost as manytaxicabs waiting and ready to serve you as there are taxicabs in NewYork whose drivers are cruising about looking for a chance to run overyou. The foregoing is still true of New York, but did not apply toLondon in war time. Having chartered our cab, much to the chagrin of a group of our fellowtravellers who had wasted precious time getting their heavy luggageout of the van, we rode through the darkened streets to a hotelformerly renowned for the scope and excellence of its cuisine. Wereached there after the expiration of the hour set apart under thefood regulations for serving dinner to the run of folks. But, becausewe were both in uniform--he as a surgeon in the British Army, and I asa correspondent--and because we had but newly finished a journey byrail, we were entitled, it seemed, to claim refreshment. However, he, as an officer, was restricted to a meal costing not toexceed six shillings--and six shillings never did go far in thishotel, even when prices were normal. Not being an officer but merely acivilian disguised in the habiliments of a military man, I, on theother hand, was bound by no such limitations, but might go as far as Ipleased. So it was decided that I should order double portions ofeverything and surreptitiously share with him; for by now we werehungry to the famishing point. We had our minds set on a steak--a large thick steak served withonions, Desdemona style--that is to say, smothered. It was a prettythought, a passing fair conception--but a vain one. "No steaks to-night, sir, " said the waiter sorrowfully. "All right, then, " one of us said. "How about chops--fat juicy chops?" "Oh, no, sir; no chops, sir, " he told us. "Well then, what have you in the line of red meats?" He was desolated to be compelled to inform us that there were no redmeats of any sort to be had, but only sea foods. So we started in withoysters. Personally I have never cared deeply for the European oyster. In size he is anæmic and puny as compared with his brethren of theeastern coast of North America; and, moreover, chronically he issuffering from an acute attack of brass poisoning. The only way bywhich a novice may distinguish a bad European oyster from a goodEuropean oyster is by the fact that a bad one tastes slightly betterthan a good one does. In my own experience I have found this to be theone infallible test. We had oysters until both of us were full of verdigris, and I, forone, had a tang in my mouth like an antique bronze jug; and then weproceeded to fish. We had fillets of sole, which tasted as theylooked--flat and a bit flabby. Subsequently I learned that this lackof savour in what should be the most toothsome of all European fishesmight be attributed to an insufficiency of fat in the cooking; but atthe moment I could only believe the trip up from Dover had given thepoor thing a touch of car sickness from which he had not recoveredbefore he reached us. After that we had lobsters, half-fare size, but charged for at thefull adult rates. And, having by now exhausted our capacity for seafoods, we wound up with an alleged dessert in the shape of threedrowned prunes apiece, the remains being partly immersed in a palishcustardlike composition that was slightly sour. "Never mind, " I said to my indignant stomach as we left thetable--"Never mind! I shall make it all up to you for thismistreatment at breakfast to-morrow morning. We shall rise early--youand I--and with loud gurgling cries we shall leap headlong into one ofthose regular breakfasts in which the people of this city and nationspecialise so delightfully. Food regulators may work their ruthlesswill upon the dinner trimmings, but none would dare to put so much asthe weight of one impious finger upon an Englishman's breakfast tableto curtail its plenitude. Why, next to Magna Charta, an Englishman'sbreakfast is his most sacred right. " This in confidence was what I whispered to my gastric juices. You see, being still in ignorance of the full scope of the ration scheme inits application to the metropolitan district, and my dishearteningexperience at the meal just concluded to the contrary notwithstanding, I had my thoughts set upon rashers of crisp Wiltshire bacon, and broadsegments of grilled York ham, and fried soles, and lovely plumpsausages bursting from their jackets, and devilled kidneys paired offon a slice of toast, like Noah and his wife crossing the gangplankinto the Ark. Need I prolong the pain of my disclosures by longer withholding thedistressing truth that breakfast next morning was a failure too? Tobegin with, I couldn't get any of those lovely crisp crescent rollsthat accord so rhythmically with orange marmalade and strawberry jam. I couldn't get hot buttered toast either, but only some thin hardslabs of war bread, which seemingly had been dry-cured in a kiln. Icould have but a very limited amount of sugar--a mere pinch, in fact;and if I used it to tone up my coffee there would be none left foroatmeal porridge. Moreover, this dab of sugar was to be my full day'sallowance, it seemed. There was no cream for the porridge either, but, instead, a small measure of skimmed milk so pale in colour that it hadthe appearance of having been diluted with moonbeams. Furthermore, I was informed that prior to nine-thirty I could have nomeat of any sort, the only exceptions to this cruel rule beingkippered herrings and bloaters; and in strict confidence the waiterwarned me that, for some mysterious reason, neither the kippers northe bloaters seemed to be up to their oldtime mark of excellence justnow. From the same source I gathered that it would be highlyinadvisable to order fried eggs, because of the lack of sufficient fatin which to cook them. So, as a last resort, I ordered two eggs, soft-boiled. They were served upended, English-fashion, in littleindividual cups, the theory being that in turn I should neatly scalpthe top off of each egg with my spoon and then scoop out the contentsfrom Nature's own container. Now Englishmen are born with the faculty to perform this difficultachievement; they inherit it. But I have known only one American whocould perform the feat with neatness and despatch; and, as he haddevoted practically all his energies to mastering this difficult alienart, he couldn't do much of anything else, and, except when eggs werebeing served in the original packages, he was practically a total lossin society. He was a variation of the breed who devote their lives toproducing a perfect salad dressing; and you must know what sad affairsthose persons are when not engaged in following their lone talent. Take them off of salad dressings and they are just naturally null andvoid. In my crude and amateurish way I attacked those eggs, breaking intothem, not with the finesse the finished egg burglar would display, butmore like a yeggman attacking a safe. I spilt a good deal of theinsides of those eggs down over their outsides, producing a mostuntidy effect; and when I did succeed in excavating a spoonful Igenerally forgot to season it, or else it was full of bits of shell. Altogether, the results were unsatisfactory and mussy. Rarely have Ieaten a breakfast which put so slight a subsequent strain upon mydigestive processes. Until noon I hung about, preoccupied and surcharged with inneryearnings. There were plenty of things--important things, too, theywere--that I should have been doing; but I couldn't seem to fix mymind upon any subject except food. The stroke of midday found mebriskly walking into a certain restaurant on the Strand that for manydecades has been internationally famous for the quality and theunlimited quantity of its foods, and more particularly for its beefand its mutton. If ever you visited London in peacetime you mustremember the place I mean. The carvers were middle-aged full-ported men, with fine ruddycomplexions, and moustaches of the Japanese weeping mulberry ormammoth droop variety. On signal one of them would come promptly toyou where you sat, he shoving ahead of him a great trencher onwheels, with a spirit lamp blazing beneath the platter to keep itsdelectable burden properly hot. It might be that he brought to you anoble haunch of venison or a splendid roast of pork or a vast leg ofboiled mutton; or, more likely yet, a huge joint of beef uprearinglike a delectable island from a sea of bubbling gravy, with an edgingof mashed potatoes creaming up upon its outer reefs. If, then, you enriched this person with a shilling, or even if youdidn't, he would take in his brawny right hand a knife with a blade afoot long, and with this knife he would cut off from the joint a sliceabout the size and general dimensions of a horseshoer's apron. And ifyou cared for a second slice, after finishing the first one, thecarver felt complimented and there was no extra charge for it. It washis delight to minister to you. But, alas, on this day when I came with my appetite whetted by my seavoyage, and with an additional edge put upon it by the privations Ihad undergone since landing, there was to be had no beef at all! Of asudden this establishment, lacking its roast beef, became to me as thetragedy of Hamlet, the melancholy Dane, would be with Hamlet andOphelia and her pa and the ghost and the wicked queen, and both thegravediggers, all left out. When I had seated myself one of the carvers came to me and, with anabased and apologetic air, very different from his jaunty manner ofyore, explained in a husky half whisper that I might have jugged hareor I might have boiled codfish, or I might have one of the awfuldishes. Anyhow, that was what I understood him to say. This last had an especially daunting sound, but I suppose I was in amorbid state, anyhow, by now; and so I made further inquiry andascertained from him that the restrictions applying to the sale ofmeat did not apply to the more intimate organs of the butcheredanimal, such as the liver and the heart, and, in the case of a cow, the tripe. But the English, with characteristic bluntness, choose tocall one of these in its cooked state an offal dish--pronounced asspelled and frequently tasting as pronounced. As one who had primed himself for a pound or so of the rib-roastsection of a grass-fed steer, I was not to be put off with one of thecritter's spare parts, as it were. Nor did the thought of codfish, andespecially boiled codfish, appeal to me greatly. I have no settledantipathy to the desiccated tissues of this worthy deep-sea voyagerwhen made up into fish cakes. Moreover that young and adolescentcreature, commonly called a Boston scrod, which is a codfish whosevoice is just changing, is not without its attractions; but thefull-grown species is not a favourite of mine. To me there has ever been something depressing about an adult codfish. Any one who has ever had occasion to take cod-liver oil--as who, unhappily, has not?--is bound to appreciate the true feelings thatmust inevitably come to a codfish as he goes to and fro in the deepfor years on a stretch, carrying that kind of a liver about with himall the while. As a last resort I took the jugged hare; but jugged hare was not whatI craved. At eventide, returning to the same restaurant, I wasluckier. I found mutton on the menu; but, even so, yet another hardblow awaited me. By reason of the meat-rationing arrangements a singlepurchaser was restricted to so many ounces a week, and no more. Theportion I received in exchange for a corner clipped off my meat cardwas but a mere reminder of what a portion in that house would havebeen in the old days. There had been a time when a sincere but careless diner from upScotland way, down in London on a visit, would have carried away morethan that much on his necktie; which did not matter particularly then, when food was plentiful; and, besides, usually he wore a pattern ofnecktie which was improved by almost anything that was spilled uponit. But it did matter to me that I had to dine on this hangnail paredfrom a sheep. A few days later I partook of a fast at what was supposed to be aluncheon, which the Lord Mayor of London attended, in company withsundry other notables. Earlier readings had led me to expect anendless array of spicy and succulent viands at any table a Lord Mayormight grace with his presence. Such, though, was not the case here. Wehad eggs for an _entrée_; and after that we had plain boiled turbot, which to my mind is no great shakes of a fish, even when tuckered upwith sauces; and after that we had coffee and cigars; and finally wehad several cracking good speeches by members of a race whose men areerroneously believed by some Americans to be practically inarticulatewhen they get up on their feet and try to talk. There was a touch of tragedy mingled in with the comedy of thesituation in the spectacle of these Englishmen, belonging to a nationof proverbially generous feeders, stinting themselves and cutting thelardings and the sweetenings and the garnishments down to the limitthat there might be a greater abundance of solid sustenanceforthcoming for their fighting forces. I do not mean by this that there was any real lack of nourishingprovender in London or anywhere else in England that I went. The longqueues of waiting patrons in front of the butcher shops during thefirst few days of my sojourn very soon disappeared when people learnedthat they could be sure of getting meat of one sort or another, and ata price fixed by law; which was a good thing too, seeing that therebythe extortioner and the profiteer lost their chances to gain undulythrough the necessities of the populace. So far as I was able toascertain, nobody on the island actually suffered--except the presentwriter of these lines; and he suffered chiefly because he could notrestrain himself from comparing the English foods of pre-war periodswith the English foods of the hour. If things were thus in England, what would they be in France? This wasthe question I repeatedly put to myself. But when I got to France asurprise awaited me. It was a surprise deferred, because for thefirst week of my sojourn upon French soil I was the guest of theBritish military authorities at a château maintained for theentertainment of visiting Americans who bore special credentials fromthe British Foreign Office. Here, because Britain took such good and splendid care to provideamply for her men in uniform, there was a wide variety of good foodand an abundance of it for the guests and hosts alike. I figured, though, that when I had passed beyond the zone of this gracioushospitality there would be slim pickings. Not at all! In Paris there was to be had all the food and nearly all the sorts offood any appetite, however fastidious, might crave. This was beforethe French borrowed the card system of ration control in order togovern the consumption of certain of the necessities. Of poultry andof sea foods the only limits to what one might order were his interiorcapacity and his purse. Of red meats there was seemingly a boundlesssupply. One reason for this plenitude lay in the fact that France, to a verygreat extent, is a self-contained, self-supporting land, which Englanddistinctly is not; and another reason undoubtedly was that the French, being more frugal and careful than their British or their Americanbrethren ever have been, make culinary use of a great deal ofhealthful provender which the English-speaking races throw away. Merely by glancing at the hors d'oeuvres served at luncheon in amedium-priced café in Paris one can get a good general idea of whatdiscriminating persons declined to eat at dinner the night before. The Parisian garbage collector must work by the day and not by thejob. On a piecework contract he would starve to death. And a thirdreason was that all through the country the peasants, by request ofthe Government, were slaughtering their surplus beeves and sheep andswine, so there might be more forage for the army horses and moregrain available for the flour rations of the soldiers. In Paris the bread was indifferently poor. An individual wasrestricted to one medium-sized roll of bread at a meal. Butter was notby any means abundant, and of sugar there was none to be had at allunless the traveller had bethought him to slip a supply into thecountry with him. The bulk of the milk supply was requisitioned forbabies and invalids and disabled soldiers. Cakes or pastries in anyform were absolutely prohibited in the public eating places, and, Ithink, in private homes as well. But of beef and mutton and veal andfowls, and the various products of the humble but widely versatilepig, there was no end, provided you had the inclination plus theprice. And so, though the lack of sugar in one's food gave one an almostconstant craving for something sweet--and incidentally insured a hostof friends for anybody who came along with a box of American candyunder his arm or a few cakes of sweet chocolate in his pocket--onemight take his choice of a wide diversity of fare at any restaurantof the first or second class, and keep well stayed. In connection with the Paris restaurants I made a most interestingdiscovery, which was that when France called up her available manpower at the time of the great mobilisation, the military headssomehow overlooked one group who, for their sins, should have beensent up where bullets and Huns were thickest. The slum gave up itsApache--and a magnificent fighter he is said to have made too! And thepiratical cab drivers who formerly infested the boulevards must haveanswered the summons almost to a man, because only a few of them areleft nowadays, and they mainly wear markings to prove they have servedin the ranks; but by a most reprehensible error of somebody inauthority the typical head waiters of the cafés were spared. I basethis assertion upon the fact that all of them appeared to be on dutyat the time of my latest visit. If there was a single absentee fromthe ranks I failed to miss him. There they were, the same hawk-eyed banditti crew that one wasconstantly encountering in the old days; and up to all the same oldtricks too--such as adding the date of the month and all the figuresof the year into the bill; and such as invariably recommending themost expensive dishes to foreigners; and such as coming to one andbending over one and smiling upon one and murmuring to one: "An' wotwill ze gentailman 'ave to-day?"--and then, before the gentailman cananswer, jumping right in and telling him what he is going to have, always favouring at least three different kinds of meats for even thelightest meal, and never less than two vegetables, and never oncefailing to recommend a full bottle of the costliest wine on thepremises. Stress of war had not caused these gentry to forget or forgo a singleone of the ancient wiles that for half a century their kind haspractised upon American tourists and others who didn't care what elsethey did with their money so long as they were given a chance to spendit for something they didn't particularly want. Yep; those chargedwith the responsibility of calling up the reserves certainly made abig mistake back yonder in August of 1914. They practiseddiscrimination in the wrong quarter altogether. If any favouritism wasto be shown they should have taken the head waiters and left theApaches at home. Many's the hard battle that I had with these chaps in 1918. It neverfailed--not one single, solitary time did it fail--that thefunctionary who took my order first tried to tell me what my order wasgoing to be, and then, after a struggle, reluctantly consented tobring me the things I wanted and insisted on having. Never once did heomit the ceremony of impressing it upon me that he would regard it asa deep favour if only I would be so good as to order a whole lobster. I do not think there was anything personal in this; he recommended thelobster because lobster was the most expensive thing he had in stock. If he could have thought of anything more expensive than lobster hewould have recommended that. I always refused--not that I harbour any grudge against lobsters as aclass, but because I object to being dictated to by a buccaneer withflat feet, who wears a soiled dickey instead of a shirt, and who isonly waiting for a chance to overcharge me or short-change me, or giveme bad money, or something. If every other form of provender hadfailed them the populace of Paris could have subsisted verycomfortably for several days on the lobsters I refused to buy in thecourse of the spring and summer of last year. I'm sure of it. And when I had firmly, emphatically, yea, ofttimes passionatelydeclined the proffered lobster, he, having with difficulty masteredhis chagrin, would seek to direct my attention to the salmon, hismotive for this change in tactics being that salmon, though apparentlyplentiful, was generally the second most expensive item upon theregular menu. Salmon as served in Paris wears a different aspect fromthe one commonly worn by it when it appears upon the table here. Over there they cut the fish through amidships, in cross-sections, and, removing the segment of spinal column, spread the portion flatupon a plate and serve it thus; the result greatly resembling a pairof miniature pink horse collars. A man who knew not the salmon in hisnative state, or ordering salmon in France, would get the idea thatthe salmon was bowlegged and that the breast had been sold to some oneelse, leaving only the hind quarters for him. Harking back to lobsters, I am reminded of a tragedy to which I was aneyewitness. Nearly every night for a week or more two of us dined atthe same restaurant on the Rue de Rivoli. On the occasion of our firstappearance here we were confronted as we entered by a large tablebearing all manner of special delicacies and cold dishes. Right in themiddle of the array was one of the largest lobsters I ever saw, reposing on a couch of water cress and seaweed, arranged upon aserviette. He made an impressive sight as he lay there prone upon hisstomach, fidgeting his feelers in a petulant way. We two took seats near by. At once the silent signal was givensignifying, in the cipher code, "Americans in the house!" And the_maître d'hôtel_ came to where he rested and, grasping him firmly justback of the armpits, picked him up and brought him over to us andinvited us to consider his merits. When we had singly and togetherdeclined to consider the proposition of eating him in each of thethree languages we knew--namely, English, bad French, and profane--themaster sorrowfully returned him to his bed. Presently two other Americans entered and immediately after them aparty of English officers, and then some more Americans. Each time theboss would gather up the lobster and personally introduce him to thenewcomers, just as he had done in our case, by poking the monsterunder their noses and making him wriggle to show that he was reallyalive and not operated by clockwork, and enthusiastically dilatingupon his superior attractions, which, he assured them, would beenormously enhanced if only _messieurs_ would agree forthwith topartake of him in a broiled state. But there were no takers; and soback again he would go to his place by the door, there to remain tillthe next prospective victim arrived. We fell into the habit of going to this place in the evenings in orderto enjoy repetitions of this performance while dining. The lobsterbecame to us as an old friend, a familiar acquaintance. We took tocalling him Jess Willard, partly on account of his reach and partly onaccount of his rugged appearance, but most of all because his managerappeared to have so much trouble in getting him matched with anybody. [Illustration: HALF A DOZEN TIMES A NIGHT OR OFTENER HE TRAVELLEDUNDER ESCORT THROUGH THE DINING ROOM] Half a dozen times a night, or oftener, he travelled under escortthrough the dining room, always returning again to his regularstation. Along about the middle of the week he began to fail visibly. Before our eyes we saw him fading. Either the artificial life he wasleading or the strain of being turned down so often was telling uponhim. It preyed upon his mind, as we could discern by his moroseexpression. It sapped his splendid vitality as well. No longer did heexpand his chest and wave his numerous extremities about when beingexhibited before the indifferent eyes of possible investors, butremained inert, logy, gloomy, spiritless--a melancholy spectacleindeed. It now required artificial stimulation to induce him to display even atemporary interest in his surroundings. With a practised finger, hiskeeper would thump him on the tenderer portions of his stomach, andthen he would wake up; but it was only for a moment. He relapsed againinto his lamentable state of depression and languor. By every outwardsign here was a lobster that fain would withdraw from the world. Butwe knew that for him there was no opportunity to do so; on the hoof herepresented too many precious francs to be allowed to go intoretirement. Coming on Saturday night we realised that for our old friend the endwas nigh. His eyes were deeply set about two-thirds of the way backtoward his head and with one listless claw he picked at the serviette. The summons was very near; the dread inevitable impended. Sunday night he was still present, but in a greatly altered state. During the preceding twenty-four hours his brave spirit had fled. Theyhad boiled him then; so now, instead of being green, he was a brightand varnished red all over, the exact colour of Truck Six in thePaducah Fire Department. We felt that we who had been sympathisers at the bedside during someof his farewell moments owed it to his memory to assist in the lastsad rites. At a perfectly fabulous price we bought the departed andundertook to give him what might be called a personal interment; buthe was a disappointment. He should have been allowed to take the veilbefore misanthropy had entirely undermined his health and destroyedhis better nature, and made him, as it were, morbid. Like Harry LeonWilson's immortal Cousin Egbert, he could be pushed just so far, andno farther. Before I left Paris the city was put upon bread cards. The country atlarge was supposed to be on bread rations too; but in most of thesmaller towns I visited the hotel keepers either did not know aboutthe new regulation or chose to disregard it. Certainly they generallydisregarded it so far as we were concerned. For all I know to thecontrary, though, they were restricting their ordinary patrons to theordained quantities and making an exception in the case of our people. It may have been one of their ways of showing a special courtesy torepresentatives of an allied race. It would have been characteristicof these kindly provincial innkeepers to have done just that thing. Likewise, one could no longer obtain cheese in a first-grade Parisrestaurant or aboard a French dining car, though cheese was to be hadin unstinted quantity in the rural districts and in the Paris shops;and, I believe, it was also procurable in the cafés of the Parisianworking classes, provided it formed a part of a meal costing not morethan five francs, or some such sum. In a first-rate place it was, ofcourse, impossible to get any sort of meal for five francs, or tenfrancs either; especially after the ten per cent luxury tax had beentacked on. In March prices at the smarter café eating places had alreadyadvanced, I should say, at least one hundred per cent above thecustomary pre-war rates; and by midsummer the tariffs showed a secondhundred per cent increase in delicacies, and one of at least fifty percent in staples, which brought them almost up to the New Yorkstandards. Outside of Paris prices continued to be moderate and fair. Just as I was about starting on my last trip to the Front beforesailing for home, official announcement was made that dog biscuitswould shortly be advanced in price to a well-nigh prohibitive figure. So I presume that very shortly thereafter the head waiters beganoffering dog biscuits to American guests. I knew they would do so, just as soon as a dog biscuit cost more than a lobster did. Until this trip I never appreciated what a race of perfect cooks theFrench are. I thought I did, but I didn't. One visiting the big citiesor stopping at show places and resorts along the main lines of motorand rail travel in peacetime could never come to a real and dueappreciation of the uniformly high culinary expertness of the populacein general. I had to take campaigning trips across country intoisolated districts lying well off the old tourist lanes to learn thelesson. Having learned it, I profited by it. No matter how small the hamlet or how dingy appearing the so-calledhotel in it might be, we were sure of getting satisfying food, cookedagreeably and served to us by a friendly, smiling little Frenchmaiden, and charged for at a most reasonable figure, considering thatgenerally the town was fairly close up to the fighting lines and thebringing in of supplies for civilians' needs was frequentlysubordinated to the handling of military necessities. Indeed, the place might be almost within range of the big guns andsubjected to bombing outrages by enemy airmen, but somehow the localBoniface managed to produce food ample for our desires, and mostappetising besides. His larder might be limited, but his good nature, like his willingness and his hospitality, was boundless. I predict that there is going to be an era of better cooking inAmerica before very long. Our soldiers, returning home, are going todemand a tastier and more diversified fare than many of them enjoyedbefore they put on khaki and went overseas; and they are going to getit, too. Remembering what they had to eat under French roofs, theywill never again be satisfied with meats fried to death, with soggyvegetables, with underdone breads. Sometimes as we went scouting about on our roving commission to seewhat we might see, at mealtime we would enter a community too smallto harbour within it any establishment calling itself a hotel. In sucha case this, then, would be our procedure: We would run down to therailroad crossing and halt at the door of the inevitable _Café de laStation_, or, as we should say in our language, the Last ChanceSaloon; and of the proprietor we would inquire the name andwhereabouts of some person in the community who might be induced, fora price, to feed a duet or a trio of hungry correspondents. At first, when we were green at the thing, we sometimes tried tointerrogate the local gendarme; but complications, misunderstandings, and that same confusion of tongues which spoiled so promising abuilding project one time at the Tower of Babel always ensued. CentralEurope has a very dense population, as the geographies used to tellus; but the densest ones get on the police force. So when by bitter experience we had learned that the gendarme never byany chance could get our meaning and that we never could understandhis gestures, we hit upon the wise expedient of going right away tothe Last Chance for information. At the outset I preferred to let one of my companions conduct theinquiry; but presently it dawned upon me that my mode of speech gaveunbounded joy to my provincial audiences, and I decided that if alittle exertion on my part brought a measure of innocent pleasure intothe lives of these good folks it was my duty, as an Ally, to obligewhenever possible. I came to realise that all these years I have been employing the wrongvehicle when I strive to dash off whimsicalities, because frequentlymy very best efforts, as done in English, have fallen flat. But whenin some remote village I, using French, uttered the simplest and mostcommonplace remark to a French tavern keeper, with absolutely nointent or desire whatsoever, mind you, to be humorous or facetious, invariably he would burst instantly into peals of unbridled merriment. Frequently he would call in his wife or some of his friends to helphim laugh. And then, when his guffaws had died away into gentlechuckles, he would make answer; and if he spoke rapidly, as he alwaysdid, I would be swept away by the freshets of his eloquence and leftgasping far beyond my depth. That was why, when I went to a revue in Paris, I hoped they'd havesome good tumbling on the bill. I understand French, of course, curiously enough, but not as spoken. Ilikewise have difficulty in making out its meaning when I read it; butin other regards I flatter myself that my knowledge of the language isquite adequate. Certainly, as I have just stated, I managed to createa pleasant sensation among my French hearers when I employed it inconversation. As I was saying, the general rule was that I should ask the name andwhereabouts of a house in the town where we might procure victuals;and then, after a bit, when the laughing had died down, one of mycompanions would break in and find out what we wanted to know. The information thus secured probably led us to a tiny cottage ofmud-daubed wattles. Our hostess there might be a shapeless, wrinkled, clumsy old woman. Her kitchen equipment might be confined to an openfire and a spit, and a few battered pots. Her larder might be most meagrely circumscribed as to variety, andgenerally was. But she could concoct such savoury dishes for us--suchmarvellous, golden-brown fried potatoes; such good soups; such savouryomelets; such toothsome fragrant stews! Especially such stews! For all we knew--or cared--the meat she put into her pot might havebeen horse meat and the garnishments such green things as she hadplucked at the roadside; but the flavour of the delectable broth curedus of any inclinations to make investigation as to the former stationsin life of its basic constituents. I am satisfied that, chosen atrandom, almost any peasant housewife of France can take an old PalmBeach suit and a handful of potherbs and, mingling these togetheraccording to her own peculiar system, turn out a ragout fit for aking. Indeed, it would be far too good for some kings I know of. And if she had a worn-out bath sponge and the cork of a discardedvanilla-extract bottle she, calling upon her hens for a little help inthe matter of eggs, could produce for dessert a delicious meringue, with floating-island effects in it. I'd stake my life on her abilityto deliver. If, on such an occasion as the one I have sought to describe, we wereperchance in the south of France or in the Côte-d'Or country, lyingover toward the Swiss border, we could count upon having a bait ofdelicious strawberries to wind up with. But if perchance we had faredinto one of the northeastern provinces we were reasonably certain themeal would be rounded out with helpings of a certain kind of cheesethat is indigenous to those parts. It comes in a flat cake, whichinvariably is all caved in and squashed out, as though thecheese-maker had sat upon it while bringing it into the market in histwo-wheeled cart. Likewise, when its temperature goes up, it becomes more of a liquidthan a solid; and it has an aroma by virtue of which it secures theattention and commands the respect of the most casual passer-by. It ismore than just cheese. I should call it mother-of-cheese. It is toother and lesser cheeses as civet cats are to canary birds--if you getwhat I mean; and in its company the most boisterous Brie or the mostvociferous Camembert you ever saw becomes at once deaf and dumb. Its flavour is wonderful. Mainly it is found in ancient Normandy; and, among strangers, eating it--or, when it is in an especially fluidstate, drinking it--comes under the head of outdoor sports. But thenatives take it right into the same house with themselves. And, no matter where we were--in Picardy, in Brittany, in the Vosgesor the Champagne, as the case might be--we had wonderful crusty breadand delicious butter and a good light wine to go along with our meal. We would sit at a bare table in the smoky cluttered interior of theold kitchen, with the rafters just over our heads, and with the brokentiles--or sometimes the bare earthen floor--beneath our feet, andwould eat our fill. More times than once or twice or thrice I have known the mistress ofthe house at settlement time to insist that we were overpaying her. From a civilian compatriot she would have exacted the last sou of herjust due; but, because we were Americans and because our country hadsent its sons overseas to help her people save France, she, arepresentative of the most canny and thrifty class in a country knownfor the thriftiness of all its classes, hesitated to accept the fullamount of the sum we offered her in payment. She believed us, of course, to be rich--in the eyes of the Europeanpeasant all Americans are rich--and she was poor and hard put to it toearn her living; but here was a chance for her to show in her own waya sense of what she, as a Frenchwoman, felt for America. Somehow, themore you see of the French, the less you care for the Germans. Moving on up a few miles nearer the trenches, we would run into ourown people; and then we were sure of a greeting, and a chair apieceand a tin plate and a tin cup apiece at an American mess. I have hadchuck with privates and I have had chow with noncoms; I have had grubwith company commanders and I have dined with generals--and always themeal was flavoured with the good, strong man-talk of the realhe-American. The food was of the best quality and there was plenty of it for all, and some to spare. One reason--among others--why the Yank fought sowell was because he was so well fed between fights. The very best meals I had while abroad were vouchsafed me during thethree days I spent with a front-line regiment as a guest of thecolonel of one of our negro outfits. To this colonel a Frenchgeneral, out of the goodness of his heart, had loaned his cook, awhiskered poilu, who, before he became a whiskered poilu, had been thechef in the castle of one of the richest men in Europe. This genius cooked the midday meals and the dinners; but, because noFrenchman can understand why any one should require for breakfastanything more solid than a dry roll and a dab of honey, thepreparation of the morning meal was intrusted to a Southern black boy, who, I may say, was a regular skillet hound. And this gifted youthwrestled with the matutinal ham and eggs and flipped the flapjacks forthe headquarters mess. On a full Southern breakfast and a wonderful French luncheon anddinner a grown man can get through the day very, very well indeed, asI bear witness. Howsomever, as spring wore into summer and summer ran its course, Ibegan to long with a constantly increasing longing for certaindistinctive dishes to be found nowhere except in my native clime;brook trout, for example, and roasting ears, and--Oh, lots of things!So I came home to get them. And, now that I've had them, I often catch myself in the act ofthoughtfully dwelling upon the fond remembrances of those spicyfragrant stews eaten in peasant kitchens, and those army doughnuts, and those slices of bacon toasted at daybreak on the lids of mess kitsin British dugouts. I suppose they call contentment a jewel because it is so rare. * * * * * BY IRVIN S. COBB FICTION THOSE TIMES AND THESELOCAL COLOROLD JUDGE PRIESTFIBBLE, D. D. BACK HOMETHE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM WIT AND HUMOR "SPEAKING OF OPERATIONS--"EUROPE REVISEDROUGHING IT DE LUXECOBB'S BILL OF FARECOBB'S ANATOMY MISCELLANY THE THUNDERS OF SILENCE"SPEAKING OF PRUSSIANS--"PATHS OF GLORY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANYNEW YORK