It is also well to remember national characteristics and understand that certain dishes are at their best at certain restaurants. For instance, you will be served with an excellent paste at a French restaurant, but if you want it at its best you will get it at an Italian restaurant. On the other hand if you desire a delicate entree you will get the best at a French restaurant. For instance, one would not ask for sauer braten anywhere except at a German restaurant. It will readily be seen that the Elegant Art of Dining in San Francisco means much more than the sitting at table and partaking of what is put before you. Dining is an art, and its pleasure is greatly enhanced by a knowledge of foods, cooking, serving, national characteristics, and combinations of both foods and wines. How few people are there, for instance, who know that one should never drink any hard liquor, like whisky, brandy, or gin, with oysters. Many a fit of acute stomach trouble has been attributed to some food that was either bad or badly prepared when the cause of the trouble was the fact that a cocktail had been taken just prior to eating oysters. Some of the possibilities of dining in San Francisco may be understood when we tell you of a progressive dinner. We had entertained one of the Exposition Commissioners from a sister State and he was so well pleased with what he had learned in a gastronomic way that he said to us: "The Governor of my State is coming and I should like to give him a dinner that will open his eyes to San Francisco's possibilities. Would it be asking too much of you to have you help me do it?" "We shall be glad to. What do you want us to do?" "Take charge of the whole business, do as you please and go as far as you like." "That is a wide order, General. What is the limit of price, and how many will be in the party?" "Just six. That will include the Governor and his wife, you two and myself and wife. Let it be something unusual and do not let the cost interfere. What I want is something unusual." It has been told us that when the Governor got back home he tried to tell some of his friends about that dinner, but they told him he had acquired the California habit of talking wide. This is the way we carried out the dinner, everything being arranged in advance: At 6:30 we called at the rooms of the Governor in the Palace Hotel and had served there dry Martini cocktails with Russian caviar on toasted rye bread. An automobile was in waiting, and at seven o'clock we were set down at Felix's, in Montgomery street, where a table was ready for us and on it were served salami of various kinds, artichokes in oil and ripe olives. Then came a service of soup, for which this restaurant is famous, followed by a combination salad, with which was served a bottle of Pontet Canet. The automobile carried us then over to Broadway and at the Fior d'Italia our table was waiting and here we were served with sand-dabs au gratin, and a small glass of sauterne.