the happier
days, and tell of how one once was able to dine at the Taverne Royale
for the sum of two francs, fifty, or three francs, fifty, enumerating
carefully and lovingly the various courses. His letter, and others of
similar nature and inspiration, were the only genuine letters that the
occupying military authorities allowed to appear in the Belgian press.

But a world tragedy was not needed to invest with romance the menus of
yesterday. A memory of youth is the rock of Mont St. Michel on the
French coast. The name suggests a towering, isolated height in the
ocean, close to the mouth of the river dividing Normandy from Brittany,
surrounded at high tide by lashing waves, and at low tide by a muddy
morass, save where a causeway joins it to the mainland. The monks of St.
Michel sent ships to help convey the armies of William to Hastings, and
when the yoke of the Normans on England was young two sons of the
Conqueror waged battle here, and Henry besieged Robert or Robert
besieged Henry. When Philip Augustus burned it and it was the only
Norman fortress that withstood Henry the Fifth, and many years later, in
Maupassant's "Notre Coeur," a certain Madame de Burne entered a room of
one of its hotels and there blew out a candle. But above all I recall,
and ninety-five out of every hundred others who have visited the rock
recall, the breakfast that was once renowned throughout Europe--a
breakfast at two francs, fifty, brought to perfection for the reason
that it was always the same, the shrimps, the cutlets, the chicken, and
the amazing omelette, which the portly Madame Poulard prepared in full
view, tossing it like a flapjack, to a chorus of delighted "Ahs!"

There is no need to go far afield. There is the older New York, with its
memories of Mine Host of oyster-bar and chop-house, of culinary joys and
the ghosts of viands. Yesterday the personality of the landlord was more
in evidence and that of his staff happily less so. Mine Host was an
individual and not yet a corporation. He oozed welcome. He walked from
table to table, bland, smiling, eager for commendation, keen-eared for
criticism. Although paid for, it was none the less his hospitality that
was being dispensed, and he was acutely sensitive to appreciation. His
retainers were fewer in number and were retainers only. Then, from the
Spanish Main the last of the pirates disappeared, bequeathing to their
descendants the tables and hat-stands of the hostelries of Fift