urse 1. Dry bread (no butter).
Removal.

Course 2. Soup (nothing else).
Removal.

Course 3. Fish (very economical), with a potato on the side.
Removal.

Course 4. Veal, macaroni.
Removal.

Course 5. Spoonful of green beans (nothing else).
Removal.

Course 6. Beef and salad (fragmentary).
Removal.

Course 7. Charlotte Russe, bit of cake.
Removal.

Course 8. Fruit (slight).
Removal.

Course 9. Morsel of cheese, one cracker.
Removal.

Course 10. Coffee.
Relief.

The traveler knows that this species of time-wasting is not unusual;
certainly the food is not unusual and does not merit such considerate
attention, although it may profit by the magnification. All this
contributes nothing to human efficiency--quite the reverse--and
certainly nothing to the rightful gusto in the enjoyment of one's
subsistence. It is a ceremony. Such laborious uselessness is quite
immoral.

I am afraid that our food habits very well represent how far we have
moved away from the essentials and how much we have misled ourselves as
to the standards of excellence. I looked in a cookbook to learn how to
serve potatoes: I found twenty-three recipes, every one of which was
apparently designed to disguise the fact that they were potatoes; and
yet there is really nothing in a potato to be ashamed of. Of course,
this kind of deception is not peculiar to cookery. It is of the same
piece as the stamping of the metal building coverings in forms to
represent brick and stone, although everybody knows that they are not
brick and stone, rather than to make a design that shall express metal
and thereby frankly tell the truth; of the same kind also as the casting
of cement blocks to represent undressed rock, although every one is
aware of the deception, rather than to develop a form that will express
cement blocks as brick expresses brick; of the same order as the
inflating of good wholesome water by carbonic gas; and all the other
deceits in materials on which our common affairs are built. It is, of
course, legitimate to present our foods in many forms that we may secure
variety even with scant and common materials; but danger may lie in any
untruthfulness with which we use the raw ma