Of etiquette in the Forge home or manners at the Forge table there were none. Etiquette was snobbish, “putting on airs.” “Manners” were something to be displayed largely for the edification of company. The only time the Forges were scrupulously polite in the privacies of the family circle were when they were angry at each other. Mrs. Forge railed at times about her children eating too fast or fleeing the table without folding their napkins. When they wanted a helping of food, they were supposed to say “Please” and “Thank you”, and on quitting the board to say “Excuse me.” But as the parents never observed these niceties themselves, practice by the children was rather superficial,—and Mrs. Forge’s despair. Whatever else may be said of Johnathan, the fact remained that “he did relish his vittles.” “Good food and plenty of it” was his motto. So it became a matter for special domestic citation to “see who could eat the most”, notably at Sunday dinner, Thanksgiving or Christmas. A monstrous appetite was a sign of health and virility and a distended stomach more to be desired than gold—yea, than the gold of the caliphs. Roast beef and boiled potatoes, corned beef and cabbage, anything that afforded inward bulk, therefore, were favorite and familiar dishes on the Forge menu. Johnathan’s favorite dinner pleasantry was wiping his mouth on the tablecloth as a coy rebuke to his wife for forgetting the napkins. During the progress of the meal, knives, forks and spoons sprawled all over the cloth or against dishes, and the clatter of china and silver exceeded the cutlery music from twenty tables at a church supper. The mother was ever in hot water because Edith only “nibbled at her food” and Nathan “washed his down with water.” After the meal, like a gorged python, Johnathan leaned back and picked and prodded his mouth for five or ten minutes with a huge toothpick. In allied domestic functions the Forges followed suit. Sometimes on Saturday nights the family bathed. Sometimes it did not bathe. It all depended on whether Mrs. Forge was energetic enough to “heat the water.” The household ran on no schedule. Nothing could be kept in its place because nothing had a place in which it could be kept. Edith particularly was the worst offender. Her bedroom resembled the pathway of a Missouri cyclone through a rummage sale until her mother “found time to pick up”, about once in two or three weeks. Clothes and shoes were bought and worn until they were worn out. Then more were grudgingly bought and worn until they were worn out also. Excepting Edith’s. Johnathan boasted—mostly to his wife and children that he and his family were solid and substantial; you always knew “just where to find him.” No stuck-up notions or fancy fairs to the Forges. People like themselves were the backbone of the nation. V