To see people eating is understood to be a very interesting and "brilliant" spectacle, and however insignificant you may be in the social world, you get a reflex of its "brilliancy" when you allow people in their turn to see you eating likewise.

A well-cooked, well-served supper is a "function," in which every man and woman who can move a jaw takes part, and though in plain parlance there is nothing uglier than the act of putting food into one's mouth, we have persuaded ourselves that it is a pretty and pleasant performance enough for us to ask our friends to see us do it.

Byron's idea that human beings should eat privately and apart, was not altogether without aesthetic justification, though according to medical authority such a procedure would be very injurious to health.

The slow mastication of a meal in the presence of cheerful company is said to promote healthy digestion--moreover, custom and habit make even the most incongruous things acceptable, therefore the display of tables, crowded with food-stuffs and surrounded by eating, drinking, chattering and perspiring men and women, does not affect us to any sense of the ridiculous or the unseemly.

On the contrary, when some of us see such tables, we exclaim "How lovely!" or "How delightful!" according to our own pet vocabulary, or to our knowledge of the humour of our host or hostess,--or perhaps, if we are young cynics, tired of life before we have confronted one of its problems, we murmur, "Not so bad!" or "Fairly decent!" when we are introduced to the costly and appetising delicacies heaped up round masses of flowers and silver for our consideration and entertainment.