After the beans had been cleared off the right-of-way we had the
dessert and the cheese and the coffee and the rest of it. And,
as we used to say in the society column down home when the wife
of the largest advertiser was entertaining, "at a suitable hour
those present dispersed to their homes, one and all voting the
affair to have been one of the most enjoyable occasions among like
events of the season." We all knew our manners - we had proved that.
Personally I was very proud of myself for having carried the thing
off so well but after I had survived a few tables d'hote in France
and a few more in Austria and a great many in Italy, where they
do not have anything at the hotels except tables d'hote, I did not
feel quite so proud. For at this writing in those parts the
slender, sylphlike string-bean is not playing a minor part, as
with us. He has the best spot on the evening bill - he is a
headliner. So is the cauliflower; so is the Brussels sprout; so
is any vegetable whose function among our own people is largely
scenic.
Therefore I treasured the memory of this incident and brought it
back with me; and I tell it here at some length of detail because
I know how grateful my countrywomen will be to get hold of it - I
know how grateful they always are when they learn about a new
gastronomical wrinkle. Mind you, I am not saying that the notion
is an absolute novelty here. For all I know to the contrary,
prominent hostesses along the Gold Coast of the United States
- Bar Harbor to Palm Beach inclusive - may have been serving one
lone vegetable as a separate course for years and years; but I
feel sure that throughout the interior the disclosure will come
as a pleasant surprise.
The directions for executing this coup are simple and all the
deadlier because they are so simple. The main thing is to invite
your chief opponent as a smart entertainer; you know the one I
mean - the woman who scored such a distinct social triumph in the
season of 1912-13 by being the first woman in town to serve tomato
bisque with whipped cream on it. Have her there by all means.
Go ahead with your dinner as though naught sensational and
revolutionary were about to happen. Give them in proper turn the
oysters, the fish, the entree, the bird, the salad. And then, all
by itself, alone and unafraid, bring on a dab of string-beans.
Wait until you see the whites of their eyes, and aim and fire at
will. Settle back then, until the first hushed shock has somewhat
abated - until your dazed and suffering rival is glaring about in
a well-bred but flustered manner, looking for something to go with
the beans. Hold her eye while you smile a smile that is compounded
of equal parts - superior wisdom, and gentle contempt for her
ignorance - and then slowly, deliberately, dip a fork into the beans
on your plate and go to it.
Believe me, it cannot lose. Before breakfast time the next morning
every woman who was at that dinner will either be sending out
invitations for a dinner of her own and ordering beans, or she
will be calling up her nearest and best friend on the telephone
to spread the tidings. I figure that the intense social excitement
occasioned in this country a few years ago by the introduction of
Russian salad dressing will be as nothing in comparison.
This stunt of serving the vegetable as a separate course was one
of the things I learned about food during our flittings across
Europe, but it was not the only thing I learned - by a long shot
it was not. For example I learned this - and I do not care what
anybody else may say to the contrary either - that here in America
we have better food and more different kinds of food, and food
better cooked and better served than the effete monarchies of the
Old World ever dreamed of. And, quality and variety considered,
it costs less here, bite for bite, than it costs there.
Food in Germany is cheaper than anywhere else almost, I reckon;
and, selected with care and discrimination, a German dinner is an
excellently good dinner. Certain dishes in England - and they are
very certain, for you get them at every meal - are good, too, and
not overly expensive. There are some distinctive Austrian dishes
that are not without their attractions either. Speaking by and
large, however, I venture the assertion that, taking any first-rate
restaurant in any of the larger American cities and balancing it
off against any establishment of like standing in Europe, the
American restaurant wins on cuisine, service, price, flavor and
attractiveness.
Centuries of careful and constant press-agenting have given French
cookery much of its present fame. The same crafty processes of
publicity, continued through a period of eight or nine hundred
years, have endowed the European scenic effects with a glamour and
an impressiveness that really are not there, if you can but forget
the advertising and consider the proposition on its merits.
Take their rivers now - their historic rivers, if you please. You
are traveling - heaven help you - on a Continental train. Between
spells of having your ticket punched or torn apart, or otherwise
mutilated; and getting out at the border to see your trunks
ceremoniously and solemnly unloaded and unlocked, and then as
ceremoniously relocked and reloaded after you have conferred largess
on everybody connected with the train, the customs regulations
being mainly devised for the purpose of collecting not tariff but
tips - between these periods, which constitute so important a feature
of Continental travel - you come, let us say, to a stream.
