"HE'D BETTER HAVE SWALLOWED IT." He had "struck it rich," and determined on a visit to the East, and in accordance with this intent, had reached, Chicago. It was just before noon, when, having fixed himself a little in room 347, of the Palmer House, he sauntered down in search of the dining-room. He had not yet had time to adorn himself with store clothes, but wanted dinner, and his "biled" shirt and his coarse useful Western attire to correspond, gave him rather the appearance of a frontier greenhorn. He found the dining-room ...

A young man came into an ornate restaurant at eight o'clock in London. He was alone, but two places had been laid at the table which was reserved for him. He had chosen the dinner very carefully, by letter a week before. A waiter asked him about the other guest. "You probably won't see him till the coffee comes," the young man told him; so he was served alone. Those at adjacent tables might have noticed the young man continually addressing the empty chair and carrying on a monologue with it throughout his elaborate dinner. "I think you ...

For Preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public.   Jonathan Swift      It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin-doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to ...

   Of all the sciences which have made a progress in late years, I think, dear Bob (to return to the subject from which I parted with so much pleasure last week), that the art of dinner-giving has made the most delightful and rapid advances. Sir, I maintain, even now with a matured age and appetite, that the dinners of this present day are better than those we had in our youth, and I can't but be thankful at least once in every day for this decided improvement in our civilization. Those who ...

     Great misconceptions have always prevailed about the Roman dinner. Dinner [coena] was the only meal which the Romans as a nation took. It was no accident, but arose out of their whole social economy. This we shall show by running through the history of a Roman day. Ridentem dicere, verum quid vetat? And the course of this review will expose one or two important truths in ancient political economy, which have been wholly overlooked.      With the lark it was that the Roman rose. Not that the earliest lark rises so early in Latium ...

   We little thought, as the saying is, that after so many dainties we had another hill to climb; for the table being uncovered to a flourish of music, three muzzled white hogs were brought in, with bells hanging on their necks. The man leading them said one was two years old, the other three, and the last full grown. For my part, I took them for acrobats, and imagined the hogs were to perform some of the surprising feats practised at the circus. But Trimalchio broke in upon our expectation by asking ...

   When Diogenes was once asked, what kind of wine he liked best, he answered, "That which is drunk at the cost of others."    Though the character of Diogenes has never excited any general zeal of imitation, there are many who resemble him in his taste of wine; many who are frugal, though not abstemious; whose appetites, though too powerful for reason, are kept under restraint by avarice; and to whom all delicacies lose their flavour, when they cannot be obtained but at their own expense.    Nothing produces more singularity of manners, and inconstancy of ...