Believe me, it cannot lose. Before breakfast time the next morning every woman who was at that dinner will either be sending out invitations for a dinner 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 intense social excitement occasioned in this country a few years ago by the introduction of Russian salad dressing will be as nothing in comparison. This stunt of serving the vegetable as a separate course was one of the things I learned about food during our flittings across Europe, but it was not the only thing I learned--by a long shot 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 food better cooked and better served than the effete monarchies of the Old World ever dreamed of. And, quality and variety considered, it costs less here, bite for bite, than it costs there. Food in Germany is cheaper than anywhere else almost, I reckon; and, selected with care and discrimination, a German dinner is an excellently good dinner. Certain dishes in England--and they are very certain, for you get 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 any first-rate restaurant in any of the larger American cities and balancing it off against any establishment of like standing in Europe, the American restaurant wins on cuisine, service, price, flavor and attractiveness. Centuries of careful and constant press-agenting have given French cookery much of its present fame. The same crafty processes of publicity, continued through a period of eight or nine hundred years, have endowed the European scenic effects with a glamour and an impressiveness that really are not there, if you can but forget the advertising and consider the proposition on its merits. Take their rivers now--their historic rivers, if you please. You are traveling--heaven help you--on a Continental train. Between spells of having your ticket punched or torn apart, or otherwise mutilated; and getting 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, the customs regulations being mainly devised for the purpose of collecting not tariff but tips--between these periods, which constitute so important a feature of Continental travel--you come, let us say, to a stream.