in their relation to talk:--
(1.) Be extremely careful, unless you know exactly the ways of your
host with regard to his shooting-lunch, not to express to him before
lunch any very definite opinion as to what the best kind of lunch
is. If, for instance, you rashly declare that, for your own part, you
detest a solemn sit-down-in-a-farmhouse lunch, and that your ideal
is a sandwich, a biscuit and a nip out of a flask, and if you then
find yourself lunching off three courses at a comfortable table, why
you'll be in a bit of a hole. Consistency would prompt you to abstain,
appetite urges you to eat. What is a poor talker to do? Obviously, he
must get out somehow. Here is a suggested method. Begin by admiring
the room.
"By Jove, what a jolly little room this is. It's as spick and span as
a model dairy. I wish you'd take me on as your tenant, CHALMERS, when
you've got a vacancy."
CHALMERS will say, "It's not a bad little hole. Old Mrs. NUBBLES keeps
things wonderfully spruce. This is one of the cottages I built five
years ago."
There's your first move. Your next is as follows. Every rustic-cottage
contains gruesome china-ornaments and excruciating-cheap German-prints
of such subjects as "_The Tryst_" (always spelt "_The Trist_" on
the German print), "_The Saylor's Return," "The Warior's Dreem_,"
"_Napoleon at Arcola_," and so forth. Point to a china-ornament and
say, "I never knew cows in this part of the country were blue and
green." Then after you've exhausted the cow, milked her dry, so to
speak, you can take a turn at the engravings, and make a sly hit at
the taste in art generated by modern education. Hereupon, someone is
dead certain to chime in with the veteran grumble about farmers who
educate their children above their station by allowing their daughters
to learn to play the piano, and their sons to acquire the rudiments
of Latin: "Give you my word of honour, the farmers' daughters about
my uncle's place, get their dresses made by my aunt's dressmaker, and
thump out old WAGNER all day long." This horrible picture of rural
depravity will cause an animated discussion. When it is over, you can
say, "This is the very best Irish-stew I've ever tasted. I must get
your cook to give me the receipt."
"Ah, my boy," says CHALMERS, "you'll find there's nothing like a stew
out shooting."
"Of course," you say, "nothing can beat it, if you've got a nice room
to eat it in, and aren't pressed for time; but, if you've got no end
of ground to cover, and not much time to do it in, I can always manage
to do myself on a scrap of anything handy. Thanks, I don't mind if I
do have a chunk of cake, and a whitewash of sherry."
Thus you have fetched a compass--I fancy the phrase is correct--and
have wiped out the memory of your indiscretion. Of course the thing
may happen the other way round. You may have expressed a preference
for solid lunches, only to find yourself set down on a tuft of grass,
with a beef sandwich and a digestive biscuit. In that case you can
begin by declaring your delight in an open-air meal, go on to admire
the scenery, and end by expressing a certain amount of judicious
contempt for the Sybarite who cannot tear himself away from effeminate
luxuries, and the trick's done.
But this subject is so great, and has so many varieties, that we must
recur to it in our next.
* * * * *
[Illustration: IN THE RUE DE LA PAIX.
_Hairdresser_. "SAY THEN, SARE ZAT YOU ARE RASÉ--SHAVE,--IS IT THAT I
SHALL CUT YOU OFF YOUR 'AIR?"
_Mr. Brown_ (_an old-fashioned Englishman, on his first Visit
to Paris--startled_). "HEY! WHAT! CUT MY HAIR OFF! NONG,
MOSSOO--COMPRENNY?--NONG! DO YOU THINK I WANT TO LOOK LIKE ONE OF YOUR
FRENCH POODLES?"]
* * * * *