The free and easy habits of the Garden period clung to him throughout his life, and under no circumstances could he be induced to use either a fork, a knife or a spoon, and even on the most formal occasions he absolutely refused to dress for dinner.
"Fingers were made before forks," he said, "and as for spoons I have no use for such frills.

I can eat my peas out of the pod, and as for soup it tastes better out of a dipper anyhow." As for the knives, his dislike of them was merely in their use at table.

He was fond of knives of all sorts, and he regarded them always as his legitimate spoil whenever he dined anywhere, pocketing every one he could lay his hands on with as much facility as the Egyptian, and Abyssinian drummers who visited our section of the country every year made off with the spoons of our hostelries.

Nor could we ever appeal to him on the score of etiquette.

Any observation as to the ways of our first families was always met by a cold but quick response that if there was any firster family than his own in all creation, he couldn't find its name in the social register.