When I saw Mr. Dickens eating and drinking his way through the elegantly bound book which Mr. Delmonico substituted for the usual bill of fare at the dinner given by the Press last April to the great artist,--a task of three hours' duration,--when, I say, I saw Mr. Dickens thus engaged, I wondered which banquet was the furthest from being the right thing,--the one to which he was then vainly trying to do justice, or the one of which Martin Chuzzlewit partook, on the day he landed in New York, at Mrs. Pawkins's boarding-house. The poultry, on the latter occasion, "disappeared as if every bird had had the use of its wings, and had flown in desperation down a human throat. The oysters, stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by scores into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at once, like sugar-plums, and no man winked his eye. Great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before the sun. It was a solemn and an awful thing to see." Of course, the company adjourned from the dining-room to "the bar-room in the next block," where they imbibed strong drink enough to keep their dinner from prostrating them. The Delmonico banquet was a very different affair. Our public dinners are all arranged on the English system; for we have not yet taken up with the fine, sweeping principle, that whatever is right for England is wrong for America. Hence, not a lady was present! Within a day's journey of New York there are about thirty ladies who write regularly for the periodical press, besides as many more, perhaps, who contribute to it occasionally. Many editors, too, derive constant and important assistance, in the exercise of their profession, from their wives and daughters, who read books for them, suggest topics, correct errors, and keep busy editors in mind of the great truth that more than one half the human race is female. Mrs. Kemble, who had a treble claim to a seat at that table, was not many miles distant. Why were none of these gifted ladies present to grace and enliven the scene? The true answer is: _Wine and smoke_! Not _our_ wine and smoke, but those of our British ancestors who invented public dinners. The hospitable young gentlemen who had the affair in charge would have been delighted, no doubt, to depart from the established system, but hardly liked to risk so tremendous an innovation on an occasion of so much interest. If it had been put to the vote (by ballot), when the company had assembled, Shall we have ladies or not? all the hard drinkers, all the old smokers, would have furtively written "not" upon their ballots. Those who drink little wine, and do not depend upon that little; those who do not smoke or can easily dispense with smoke,--would have voted for the ladies; and the ladies would have carried the day by the majority which is so hard to get,--two thirds.