two
meals, or, where lunch is taken, the third of three. The change is not
consistent with hygienic principle; for, if lunch be not taken, the
interval between breakfast and dinner is too great, and in that case
hunger tempts to make the meal too heavy for the exhausted powers of the
stomach: if, on the contrary, lunch be taken, dinner becomes an
absurdity, as in that case a meal so elaborate and heavy is not
required, and cannot healthfully be partaken of at so late an hour.
Nevertheless, in a plan of life which devotes the eight or nine hours
after breakfast either to business or to out-door amusements, it is
needless to think of reviving the old meridian dinner for any but ladies
and other stay-at-home people; nor even for them, seeing that they must
be mainly determined in their arrangements by those leading members of
the family who have to spend that part of the day away from home.

There is a need for some reform which would at once accommodate the
busy, and save the multitude from the disadvantages of heavy
six-and-seven-o'clock dinners. This might be effected by arranging for
only a supper at six or seven o'clock--that is, some lighter meal than
dinner--leaving every one to take such a lunch in the middle of the day
as he could find an opportunity of eating. Let this supper be the meal
of family reunions--the meal of society. Composed of a few light
tasteful dishes, accompanied by other indulgences, according to taste or
inclination, and followed by coffee, it would be a cheerful and not
necessarily unhealthful affair. As a meal to which to invite friends,
being cheaper, it would allow of more society being indulged in than is
compatible with the monstrous presentments of meat and drink which
constitute the modern company dinner. It would be practically a revival
of those nice supper-parties which our grandfathers indulged in after
the hours of business, and of the pleasantness of which we have such
glowing accounts.

That this is really the common-sense view of the question, can hardly be
doubted. By bringing the cost within reasonable limits, the plan
proposed relieves the entertainment from moral vulgarity; and by
avoiding all suggestion of a meeting for the gratification of mere
physical hunger, it relieves it from material vulgarity. We have laughed
too heartily at the dinner of the ancients in 'Peregrine Pickle,' to
wish to lead back the age to a classic model; and yet on all subjects
connected with ta