At a table of three courses, the guests have a right to expect some sort of a dessert; it is the necessary consequence of a certain order of dinners; and, if the host be unable to bedeck the board with choice rarities, he must, at any rate, be provided with a nut, an olive, and, for late sitters, a devilled gizzard. No man is permitted to offend form, or to infringe upon the privileges of diners-out, in this particular. If he cannot furnish what he fain would, he must offer what he can;—it being, properly enough no doubt, conventionally voted sheer cruelty, to give a man nothing to eat after he has had his fill of the best of everything. If no pineapple be present, an apology is peremptorily expected, and something must be selected to take the important character which it usually sustains in the festal afterpiece, “for that night only.” Mrs. Dousterbattle, my late much lamented friend, considered the tragedy train of Mrs. Siddons, as the bonne bouche of her Queen Katherine; and there are many estimable people, who regard the range of dishes at a dinner-table, as merely composing a dull vista, through which they can look forward to the fine prospect of fruit and ices at its termination. However good the by-gone courses may have been,—whatever may be the disposition of the host, whether “civil as an orange,” or sourer than a lemon, they sturdily maintain,—and, it must be confessed, with some propriety,—that every man should be treated according to his dessert. It occasionally happens, that, notwithstanding his zeal, the founder of the feast caters so unluckily, that some of his friends travel from Dan to Beersheba, among his dishes, and find all barren. A guest so situated, is justified in supposing that there will be, at least, one oasis in the desert, to afford him refreshment.

Impressed with the force of his own arguments, the purveyor of the preceding courses has attempted an epilogue to his entertainment; in which, he trusts that he has not presumed too much on the usual leniency of after-dinner criticism; and that none of his guests are of the delightful class of censors, who flourish a flail to demolish a cobweb,—who indulge in proving, by very elaborate and profound arguments, that there is but little substance in “trifles light as air;” or who occasionally go so far, in fits of ultra fastidiousness, as to cross an author's t, and dot an i for him.

Original Size -- Medium-Size