“The modern dinner-table is very pretty,” responded Barbara. “I don’t see how it could be improved materially.”
“I dare say, but somehow one can’t help thinking at times that the effort for effect is too noticeable, and that the real object of sitting down to dinner in company, agreeable social intercourse, is consequently lost sight of. If only the very rich were guilty of wanton display, the answer would be that the rank and file of our well-to-do, sensible people have very simple entertainments. Unfortunately, while the very rich are constantly vying to outstrip one another, the dinner-table and the dinner of the well-to-do American are each growing more and more complex and elaborate. Perhaps not more so than abroad among the nobility or people of means; but certainly we have been Europeanized in this respect to such an extent that, not only is there practically nothing left for us to learn in the way of being luxurious, but I am not sure that we are not disposed to convince the rest of the civilized world that a free-born American, when fully developed, can be the most luxurious individual on earth.”
Barbara looked a little grave at this. “Everything used to be so ugly and unattractive a little while ago that I suppose our heads have been turned,” she answered. “After this I shall make a rule, when we give a dinner-party, to keep one-half of my table ornaments in the safe as a rebuke to my vanity. Only if I am to show so much of the tablecloth, I shall have to buy some with handsome patterns. Don’t you see?”
Perhaps this suggestion that our heads have been turned for the time being by our national prosperity, and that they will become straight again in due course of time, is the most sensible view to take of the situation. There can be no doubt that among well-to-do people, who would object to be classed in “the smart set,” as the reporters of social gossip odiously characterize those prominent in fashionable society in our large cities, the changes in the last thirty years connected with every-day living, as well as with entertaining, have all been in the direction of cosmopolitan usage. It is now only a very old-fashioned or a very blatant person who objects to the use of evening dress at the dinner-table, or the theatre, as inconsistent with true patriotism. The dinner-hour has steadily progressed from twelve o’clock noon until it has halted at seven _post_ meridian, as the ordinary hour for the most formal meal of the day, with further postponement to half-past seven or even eight among the fashionable for the sake of company. The frying-pan and the tea-pot have ceased to reign supreme as the patron saints of female nutrition, and the beefsteak, the egg, both cooked and raw, milk and other flesh-and-blood-producing food are abundantly supplied to the rising generation of both sexes by the provident parent of to-day. The price of beef in our large cities has steadily advanced in price until its use as an article of diet is a serious monster to encounter in the monthly bills, but the husband and father who is seeking to live wisely, seems not to be deterred from providing it abundantly.