Perhaps if the roast of mutton or of beef - a big,
generous one - were brought on the table and carved in full
view of the client, that might give the right sense of
earnestness and reality to the thing; but they don't do that,
they pass the sliced meat around on a dish, and so you
are perfectly calm, it does not stir you in the least.
Now a vast roast turkey, stretched on the broad of his back,
with his heels in the air and the rich juices oozing
from his fat sides ... but I may as well stop there,
for they would not know how to cook him. They can't
even cook a chicken respectably; and as for carving it,
they do that with a hatchet.
This is about the customary table d'ho^te bill in summer:
Soup (characterless).
Fish - sole, salmon, or whiting - usually tolerably good.
Roast - mutton or beef - tasteless - and some last year's potatoes.
A pa^te, or some other made dish - usually good - "considering."
One vegetable - brought on in state, and all alone - usually
insipid lentils, or string-beans, or indifferent asparagus.
Roast chicken, as tasteless as paper.
Lettuce-salad - tolerably good.
Decayed strawberries or cherries.
Sometimes the apricots and figs are fresh, but this is
no advantage, as these fruits are of no account anyway.
The grapes are generally good, and sometimes there
is a tolerably good peach, by mistake.
The variations of the above bill are trifling. After a
fortnight one discovers that the variations are only apparent,
not real; in the third week you get what you had the first,
and in the fourth the week you get what you had the second.
Three or four months of this weary sameness will kill
the robustest appetite.
It has now been many months, at the present writing,
since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon
have one - a modest, private affair, all to myself.
I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill
of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me,
and be hot when I arrive - as follows:
Radishes. Baked apples, with cream
Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs.
American coffee, with real cream.
American butter.
Fried chicken, Southern style.
Porter-house steak.
Saratoga potatoes.
Broiled chicken, American style.
Hot biscuits, Southern style.
Hot wheat-bread, Southern style.
Hot buckwheat cakes.
American toast. Clear maple syrup.
Virginia bacon, broiled.
Blue points, on the half shell.
Cherry-stone clams.
San Francisco mussels, steamed.
Oyster soup. Clam Soup.
Philadelphia Terapin soup.
Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style.
Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad.
Baltimore perch.
Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas.
Lake trout, from Tahoe.
Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans.
Black bass from the Mississippi.
American roast beef.
Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style.
Cranberry sauce.
