EATING IN TWO OR THREE LANGUAGES ***
Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Janet Blenkinship, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team of Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net
[Illustration: NO RED MEATS, BUT ONLY SEA FOODS]
_Eating_
_in Two or Three_
_Languages_
_By_
_Irvin S. Cobb_
_Author of_ _"Paths of Glory," "Those Times and These," etc._
_New York_ _George H. Doran Company_
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
* * * * *
TO
B.B. McALPIN, ESQUIRE,
WHO KNOWS A LOT
ABOUT EATING
* * * * *
ILLUSTRATIONS
No Red Meats, but Only Sea Foods. _Frontispiece_
"Herb, Stand Back! Stand Well Back to Avoid Being Splashed!"
Half a Dozen Times a Night or Oftener He Travelled under Escort through the Room
_Eating in Two or Three Languages_
On my way home from overseas I spent many happy hours mapping out a campaign. To myself I said: "The day I land is going to be a great day for some of the waiters and a hard day on some of the cooks. Persons who happen to be near by when I am wrestling with my first ear of green corn will think I am playing on a mouth organ. My behaviour in regard to hothouse asparagus will be reminiscent of the best work of the late Bosco. In the matter of cantaloupes I rather fancy I shall consume the first two on the half shell, or _au naturel_, as we veteran correspondents say; but the third one will contain about as much vanilla ice cream as you could put in a derby hat.
[Illustration: "HERB, STAND BACK! STAND WELL BACK TO AVOID BEING SPLASHED!"]
"And when, as I am turning over my second piece of fried chicken, with Virginia ham, if H. Hoover should crawl out from under it, and, shaking the gravy out of his eyes, should lift a warning hand, I shall say to him: 'Herb,' I shall say, 'Herb, stand back! Stand well back to avoid being splashed, Herb. Please desist and do not bother me now, for I am busy. Kindly remember that I am but just returned from over there and that for months and months past, as I went to and fro across the face of the next hemisphere that you'll run into on the left of you if you go just outside of Sandy Hook and take the first turn to the right, I have been storing up a great, unsatisfied longing for the special dishes of my own, my native land. Don't try, I pray you, to tell me a patriot can't do his bit and eat it too, for I know better.
"'Shortly I may be in a fitter frame of mind to listen to your admonitions touching on rationing schemes; but not to-day, and possibly not to-morrow either, Herb. At this moment I consider food regulations as having been made for slaves and perhaps for the run of other people; but not for me. As a matter of fact, what you may have observed up until now has merely been my preliminary attack--what you might call open warfare, with scouting operations. But when they bring on the transverse section of watermelon I shall take these two trenching tools which I now hold in my hands, and just naturally start digging in. I trust you may be hanging round then; you'll certainly overhear something.'
