nsipidly, it rouses no
enthusiasm.

Imagine a poor exile contemplating that inert thing; and imagine an
angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better land and setting before him
a mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering
from the griddle; dusted with a fragrant pepper; enriched with
little melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness and
genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining
the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender,
yellowish fat gracing an outlying district of this ample county of
beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the
tenderloin still in its place; and imagine that the angel also adds a
great cup of American home-made coffee, with a cream a-froth on top,
some real butter, firm and yellow and fresh, some smoking hot-biscuits,
a plate of hot buckwheat cakes, with transparent syrup--could words
describe the gratitude of this exile?

The European dinner is better than the European breakfast, but it has
its faults and inferiorities; it does not satisfy. He comes to the table
eager and hungry; he swallows his soup--there is an undefinable
lack about it somewhere; thinks the fish is going to be the thing he
wants--eats it and isn't sure; thinks the next dish is perhaps the one
that will hit the hungry place--tries it, and is conscious that there
was a something wanting about it, also. And thus he goes on, from dish
to dish, like a boy after a butterfly which just misses getting caught
every time it alights, but somehow doesn't get caught after all; and at
the end the exile and the boy have fared about alike; the one is full,
but grievously unsatisfied, the other has had plenty of exercise, plenty
of interest, and a fine lot of hopes, but he hasn't got any butterfly.
There is here and there an American who will say he can remember rising
from a European table d'hote perfectly satisfied; but we must not
overlook the fact that there is also here and there an American who will
lie.

The number of dishes is sufficient; but then it is such a monotonous
variety of UNSTRIKING dishes. It is an inane dead-level of
"fair-to-middling." There is nothing to ACCENT it. 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 sli