But it will be rendering greater justice to the author to permit him to speak for himself on some of the niceties connected with the art he has expounded so wisely and so well: "Anybody can dine, but few know how to dine so as to ensure the greatest quantity of health and enjoyment" [he agrees with Dumas and Fayot]. "Indeed, many people contrive to destroy their health; and as to enjoyment, I shudder when I think how often I have been doomed to only a solemn mockery of it; how often I have sat in durance stately, to go through the ceremony of dinner, the essence of which is to be without ceremony, and how often in this land of liberty I have felt myself a slave. "There is in the art of dining a matter of special importance--I mean attendance, the real end of which is to do that for you which you cannot so well do for yourself. Unfortunately, this end is generally lost sight of, and the effect of attendance is to prevent you from doing that which you could do much better for yourself. The cause of this perversion is to be found in the practice and example of the rich and ostentatious, who constantly keep up a sort of war-establishment, or establishment adapted to extraordinary instead of ordinary occasions, and the consequence is that, like all potentates who follow the same policy, they never really taste the sweets of peace; they are in a constant state of invasion by their own troops. It is a rule at dinners not to allow you to do anything for yourself, and I have never been able to understand how even salt, except it be from some superstition, has so long maintained its place. I am rather a bold man at table and set form very much at defiance, so that if a salad happens to be within my reach, I make no scruple to take it to me; but the moment I am espied, it is nipped up from the most convenient into the most inconvenient position. See a small party with a dish of fish at each end of the table, and four silver covers standing unmeaningly at the sides, whilst everything pertaining to the fish comes, even with the best attendance, provokingly lagging, one thing after another, so that contentment is out of the question; and all this is done under pretence that it is the most convenient plan. This is an utter fallacy. The only convenient plan is to have everything actually upon the table that is wanted at the same time, and nothing else; as, for example, for a party of eight, turbot and salmon, with doubles of each of the adjuncts, lobster-sauce, cucumber, young potatoes, cayenne, and Chili vinegar, and let the guests assist one another, which with such an arrangement they could do with perfect ease. This is undisturbed and visible comfort.