Once when marooned on a small island in the midst of a turbulent sea of traffic, latitude Fifth Avenue, longitude Forty-second Street, I asked the governor of the island, a man of great stature and kingly mien, what he thought was the origin of the institution known as the Complimentary Banquet. Checking with an imperious gesture a monstrous traffic wave that seemed like to engulf us both the next moment, his voice came to me calm and reassuring above the tumult that surged and roared about us. “If it’s a wake you do be meaning, sorr, sure it’s as old as Ireland itself, it is!” And the Traffic Cop was right. Nearly two thousand years ago Strabo, the Greek geographer, describing the natives of Ivernia, wrote: “They are more savage than the English, and enormous eaters, deeming it commendable to devour their deceased relatives.” In this, probably the first reference in literature to the Irish wake, the suggestion that the departed one contributed anything more than the honor of his company must be taken with a grain of salt. Strabo was an awful liar, and whole barrels of salt might be used on his “Geography” without perceptibly affecting its flavor. In all probability the cannibal touch was nothing more than an unseemly concession to the yellow taste of the Attic metropolis. Nevertheless, though he never appeared on the menu, the “departed relative,” the _sine qua non_ of all festive gatherings, was (as the social instinct developed among the savage tribes) ever in increasing demand, and it is to be feared that in smart Ivernian circles it was not unusual to speed the departing relative in promoting the gaiety of an otherwise dull season. Under such conditions it is hardly to be wondered at that in Ivernia, at that period, personal popularity was the most unpopular thing imaginable, and what more thinkable than that the reluctant candidate for a complimentary dinner should feign for the occasion the grewsome condition necessary for qualification. With the spread of Christianity, this irksome feat of mimicry on the part of the Guest of Honor, at first a protective subterfuge, grew to be a social convention. And irksome indeed it was. To feign at a banquet by the exercise of self-control a state of unconsciousness, joyfully achieved by one’s fellow guests through more convivial channels, was no task for the amateur. Then it was that, puffed up, comatose, obese, along came the Professional Diner Out. And now, after nearly two thousand years, what have we to show?