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There is a sense, of course, in which everything from the pages of MR.
PUNCH might be regarded as coming into a collection entitled "After
Dinner Stories." All good stories are really for telling after dinner.
Somehow or other one seldom associates wit and humour with the breakfast
table, although the celebrated breakfast parties of Rogers, the banker,
were doubtless in no way deficient in either. Over the walnuts and wine,
when men have feasted well and are feeling on the best of terms with
themselves and their fellows, the cares of the day put past and the
pleasures of the gas-lit hours begun, that is undoubtedly the ideal time
for the flow of wit.
It must not, therefore, be thought that the present volume is in anywise
distinguished from the others of the series to which it belongs in the
appropriateness of its contents for the dinner party. No more than any
of its companions is it designed to that end; but as it is concerned
almost exclusively with the humours of dining, with stories of diners,
it will be admitted that its title is not without justification. Private
dinner parties, public banquets, the solitary dinner at the restaurant,
the giving and accepting of invitations, these and many other phases of
dining come within its scope, and if it be noticed that a considerable
amount of its humour has something of the fragrance of good old port--to
say nothing of the aroma of wines that are bad!--it can only be
retorted that MR. PUNCH'S duty has ever been to mirror the manners of
the changing time, and in his early days the wine flowed more freely
than it does to-day. For our personal taste we could have wished less of
this humour of the bottle, but throughout this library an effort has
been made to maintain in some degree a historical perspective, so that,
in addition to the prime purpose of entertainment, each of these books
in MR. PUNCH'S LIBRARY might be a faithful picture of the manners of the
Victorian period in which most of his life has been passed. If to-day
these manners seem to us just a trifle coarser than we esteem the social
habits of our own day, surely that is a comforting reflection and one
not lightly to be lost!
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