"In your own home the soup is on the table at a certain hour, the roast is taken off the jack, the dessert is spread out on the sideboard. Your servants, in order to get more time over their meals, hurry you up; they do not serve you, they gorge you. At the restaurant, on the contrary, they are never in a hurry, they let you wait, and, besides, I always tell the waiters not to mind me; that I like being kept a long while--that is one of the reasons why I come here. Another thing, at the restaurant the door is opened at every moment and something happens. A friend, a chum, or a mere acquaintance comes in; one chats and laughs; all this aids digestion. A man ought not to make digestion a business apart. He ought to dine and digest at the same time, and nothing aids this dual function like good conversation. Perhaps the servant of Madame de Maintenon, when the latter was still Madame Scarron, was a greater philosopher than we suspect when he whispered to his mistress, 'Madame, the roast has run short; give them another story.'" It was after a dinner in a Fifth Avenue restaurant, at which terrapin and '89 Pol Roger, canvasback, and '78 Haut-Bailly figured, that while smoking his Vuelta-Abajo--impressed with the excellence of the repast, and smitten at the thought of his absent ones--the host observed to his companions, "Heavens! how I wish I could afford to treat my family to a dinner like this!" The stomach also has its conscience. But Thackeray has covered precisely such a case in the essay, "On some Dinners at Paris." "What is the use," he asks, "of having your children, who live on roast mutton in the nursery, to sit down and take the best three-fourths of a _perdreau truffé_ with you? What is the use of helping your wife, who doesn't know the difference between sherry and Madeira, to a glass of priceless Romanée or sweetly odoriferous Château Lafite of '42?" Besides his sonnets "Le Toast" and "Barrière du Maine," Charles Monselet has written most entertainingly of the restaurant under the title, "Les Cabinets Particuliers," a sketch which figured in "Le Double Almanach Gourmand" of 1866, of which he was the editor for several years. In this publication appeared Albert Glatigny's "Rue des Poitevins," one of several poems with the restaurant as their theme, the stanzas being not unworthy of the melodious lyre of "Les Vignes Folles" and "Les Flèches d'Or": "C'est le vieux restaurant où vont les écoliers Qui n'ont point submergés les cols brisés encore. Dans l'atmosphère chaude et franche on voit éclore, Entre deux brocs de vin des refrains cavaliers. "Les peintres, les rimeurs,--leurs soucis oubliés,-- Y vont rire le soir d'un bon rire sonore, Et pour mon compte, moi dans mon for, je m'honore D'avoir allègrement grimpé ses escaliers.