EFORE DINNER]

Had we lived in Paris, no doubt we would have done as we did in Rome and
Venice and have gone every night to the same restaurant where the same
greeting from the same smiling _patron_ and the same table in the same
corner awaited us. But change and experiment and a good deal of
preliminary discussion over an _aperitif_ were more in the order of a
week's visit. As a rule, we preferred the small restaurant that was
cheap, as we were most of us impecunious, also the restaurant that was
out-of-doors, out-of-doors turning the simplest dinner into a feast.
However, nobody yet was really ever young who was never reckless.
Occasionally we dined joyously beyond our means, and one memorable year
we devoted our nights to giving each other dinners where the best
dinners were to be had. Those alone who are blest with little money and
the obligation of making that little can appreciate the splendour of our
recklessness, just as those alone who work all day and eat sparingly can
have the proper regard for a good dinner. I do not regret the
recklessness, I am not much the poorer for it to-day whatever I was at
the time, and I should have missed something out of life had I not once
dined recklessly in Paris. Moreover, our special business was the study
of art and in Paris dining and art are one, though the foolish man in
less civilized countries preaches that to eat for any other purpose than
to live is gluttony. The clear intellect of the French saves them from
that mistake, and I have entertained hopes for the future of my own
country ever since one wise American,--Henry T. Finck,--discovering the
truth that the French have always had the common sense to know,
proclaimed it in a book which I have honoured by placing it in my
Collection of Cookery Books with Grimod de la Reyniere, Brillat-Savarin
and Dumas.

At the time we were more concerned with the dinner than the philosophy
of dining. Our one aim was to dine well, whether it was the right thing
or the wrong, even whether or no it sent us back to London bankrupt. We
did not flinch before the price we paid, and if we were too wise to
measure the value of the dinner by its cost, we were proud of the
bigness of the bill as the "visible sign," the guarantee of success. It
was a tremendous triumph for J. when he paid the biggest of all, which
he did, not so much because he set out to deliberately as because, by
the choice of chance, he had invited us to Voisin's in the Ru