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Europe Revised

Chapter 8 A Tale of a String-bean

Word Count: 4563    |    Released on: 29/11/2017

he event hereinafter set forth came to pass. Our host was an American who had lived abroad a good many year

to the palate. Then came the fowl, roasted, of course-the roast fowl is the national bird of France-and along with the fowl

-beans. When it came my turn I helped myself-copiously-and waited for what was to go with the beans. A pause ensued-to my imagination an embarrassed pause. Seeking a cue I glanced down the table and back again. There

e successes of the present century, he has to go and derange the whole running schedule by serving the salad when he should have served the beans, a

en I holed out in three. My last stroke was a dandy, if I do say it myself. The others were game too-I could see that. They were eating beans as though beans were particularly what

e utterly prostrated by now-she'd be down and out-and we'd all be standing back to give her air; but when they're born in the purple it shows in these big emergencies. Look at this woman now-not

he society column down home when the wife of the largest advertiser was entertaining, "at a suitable hour those present dispersed to their homes, one

they do not have anything at the hotels except tables d'hote, I did not feel quite so proud. For at this writing in those parts the slender, sylphlike string-bean is not playing a minor part, a

always are when they learn about a new gastronomical wrinkle. Mind you, I am not saying that the notion is an absolute novelty here. For all I know to the contrary, prominent hostesses along the Gold Coast of the Unite

ored such a distinct social triumph in the season of 1912-13 by being the first woman in town to serve tomato bisque with whipped cream on it. Have her there by all means. Go ahead with your dinner as though nau

ffering rival is glaring about in a well-bred but flustered manner, looking for something to go with the beans. Hold her eye while you smile a smile that is comp

inner of her own and ordering beans, or she will be calling up her nearest and best friend on the telephone to spread the tidings. I figure that the

ot it was not. For example I learned this-and I do not care what anybody else may say to the contrary either-that here in America we have better food and more different kinds of food, and

them at every meal-are good, too, and not overly expensive. There are some distinctive Austrian dishes that are not without their attractions either. Speaking by and large, however, I venture the assertion that, taking a

f publicity, continued through a period of eight or nine hundred years, have endowed the European scenic effects with a glamour

ng out at the border to see your trunks ceremoniously and solemnly unloaded and unlocked, and then as ceremoniously relocked and reloaded after you have conferred largess on everybody connected with the train, t

robably not even be dignified with a regular name, and in the East it would be of so little importance that the local congressman would not ask an annual appropriation of more than half a million dollars for the purposes of

icans do not enthuse over an English river because of what it is in itself, but because it happens to be th

of its reputat

ud and a trifle too solid for water. On the nearer bank was a small village populated by short people and long dogs. Out in midstream, making poor headway against the semi-gelid current, was a little flutter-tailed steamboa

ally poetic title; but when I found out it was the Danube-no less-I had a distinct thrill.

he does; but when you are calling in France you find most of them out. They have emigrated to America, where a French chef gets more money in one year

ly long time to bring the food to you. If you grew reckless and ordered anything that was not on the bill it upset the entire establishment; and before they calmed down

ing at either side of her head, I thought of a Lenox Avenue local in the New York Subway. However, it was not so much her jewelry that proved such a fascinating sight as it was her pleasing habit of fe

more or less privately. Over there, a toothpick is a family heirloom and is handed down from one generation to another, and is operated in company ost

ice of an unpriced dish and then orders something else; but the American, as a rule, is either too proud or too foolish to inquire into these details. At home he is beset by a hideous fear that some waiter will think he is of a mercenary nature; and when he is abroad this trait in him is accentua

u have finished, and places a display of fresh fruit before you, with a winning smile and a bow and a gesture, which, taken together, would seem to indicate that he is extending the compliments of the season and that the fruit will be on the house; but never did one of the intriguing scoundrels deceive me. Somewhere, years before, I had read statistic

ster is a small, copper-tinted proposition, and he tastes something like an indisposed mussel and something like a touch of biliousness; but he is sufficiently costly for all purposes. The cafe proprietor cherishes him so highly that he refuses to vulgarize him by p

e tourist route and therefore-as yet-unspoiled and uncommercialized. This place was up a back street near one of the markets; a small and smellsome place it was, decorated most atrociously. In the front window, in close juxtaposition, were a pla

r his arm like golf sticks, distributing his loaves among the diners. But somewhere in its mysterious and odorous depths that little bourgeois cafe harbored an honest-to-goodness cook. He knew a few things about gri

he goose, particularly the goose of Strasburg, where the pate de foie gras comes from. The

ry that through all our reading days we had been hearing about. You will doubtless recall the description, as so frequently and graphically dished up by the inspired writers of travelogue stuff-the picturesque, tumbledown place, where on a cloth of coarse linen-white like snow-old Marie, her wrinkled face abea

, broken wall, on which all manner of excrescences in the shape of tiny dormers and misshapen little towers hung, like Texas ticks on the ears of a quarantined steer. Within the wall the numerous ruins that made up the inn were thrown together any fa

ly would call la limite! The omelet she turned out for us was a thing that was very firm and durable, containing, I think, leather findings, with a sprinkling of chopped henbane on the top. The c

atent adder in the office of a loan shark, which is the worst stinger of the whole adder family. If consumed with any degree of freedom it puts a downy coat on your tongue next morning t

t the conclusion of the repast we nibbled tentatively at the dessert, which was a pancake with jelly, done in the image of a medicated bandage but not so tasty as one. And then I paid the check, which was of august propo

New York or Boston or Philadelphia served such food to his patrons, at such prices, the sheriff would have him inside of two months; and everybody would be glad of it too-e

e to find, but we admit our shortcomings in this regard and we deplore them-we do not shellac them over with a glamour of bogus romance, with

ters receded-one was an immature hen and the other was an adolescent calf. At every meal except breakfast-when they do not give you anything at all-the French give you veal and poulet

and drumsticks-but is chopped up with a cleaver into cross sections, and strange-looking chunks of the wreckage are sent to you. Moreover they cook th

able-d'hote imitation of French cooking, invariably buttressed with the everlasting veal and the eternal poulet roti. At the finish of a meal the waiter brings you, on one plate, two small withered apples a

proceed with the obsequies. I told him I was not one of those morbid people who love to look on the faces of the strange dead. The funera

-seventh Street, in New York. There you might find the typical dishes of Italy-I defy you to find them in Italy without a search

e ear and at the same time avoid corn in the ear. A dish of asparagus has been known to develop fine acoustic properties, and in certain quarters there is a cryi

was what you might call a human hazard-a golf-player would probably have thought of him in that connection. He was eating flour dumplings, using his knife for a niblick all the w

at his spaghetti at all-he inhales it. He gathers up a loose strand and starts it down his throat. He then respires from the diaphragm, and like a troupe of trained angleworms that entire mass of spaghetti uncoils itself, gets up off the plate and disappears

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