The evening meal, call it by whatever name we may, is apt to be the most social one of the three which are the rule in this land. The pressure of the business allotted to the hours of daylight is over. The memory and the conversation of each one who comes to the feast, are richer by the history of another day. It is sometimes hard to “make talk” for the breakfast table. The talk of the six o’clock P.M. dinner, or supper, or tea, makes itself. I frankly own that, however much may be said in favor, on hygienic grounds, of early meals for the nursery, the mid-day dinner for adults has always worn for me a grim, and certainly an unpoetical aspect. The “nooning” should, for the worker with muscles, nerves, or brains, be a light repast and easily digested, followed by real physical rest. He is weary when he comes to it; he eats in haste, his mind intent upon the afternoon’s work, and he may not tarry when it is dispatched, having already “lost” an hour in discussing (or bolting) soup, salad, fish, meat and dessert. The weight of undigested food seems, during the succeeding hours of business or study, to shift its position and clog and heat the brain.

“I will not preach to roast-beef and plum-pudding!” said America’s greatest preacher, in refusing to hold a Sabbath afternoon service.

People quoted the bon mot approvingly. Few had common sense enough to apply it to week-day occupations. If men and women would rest, after an early dinner on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, as long and absolutely as they do on Sabbath afternoons, there would be less money made, perhaps, but fewer stomachs destroyed, and fewer intellects overstrained.

This, however, as Paul candidly remarks touching certain of his deliverances—“I say of mine own judgment.” And, after all, I should be the sorriest of the sorry to see the tea-table swept out of American households. While I write, there come stealing back to me recollections that tempt me to draw my pen through some lines I have just set down. Late dinners and late suppers used to be the fashion, seldom altered—in Southern homes. In summer, the latter were always eaten by artificial light. In winter, lamps were brought in with the dessert, at dinner-time. I was almost grown before I was introduced to what the valued correspondent who gave us the text for the first “Familiar Talk” in this volume calls, “a real old New England tea-table.” During one delicious vacation I learned, and reveled in knowing, what this meant. Black tea with cream, (I have never relished it without, since that idyllic summer) rounds of brown bread, light, sweet, and fresh; hot short-cake in piles that were very high when we sat down, and very low when we arose; a big glass bowl of raspberries and currants that were growing in the garden under the back windows an hour before; a basket of frosted cake; a plate of pink ham, balanced by one of shaved, not chipped beef—and sage cheese! I had never eaten it before. I have never tasted it anywhere else than in that wide, cool tea-room, the level sun-rays flickering through the grape-vines shading the west side of the house, and through the open casements opposite, a view of Boston bay—all purple and rose and gold, dotted with hundreds of white sails. This was what we had, when, in that Old New England farm-house, Polly, the faithful—who had startled me, for a time, by saying, “proper glad,” and “sweet pretty;” who “hadn’t ought” to do this, and “should admire” to do that—Polly, whom nobody thought of calling a servant, but was a “help” in every conceivable sense of the word—had “put the kettle on and we all had tea!”

I do not like to think it possible that in that beloved homestead they may have kept up with the times so far as to have dinner at six o’clock, and tea—never!

It is a pleasant practice, in many families, where the late dinner is convenient, and, for many reasons, preferred during the rest of the week, to have a “comfortable tea” on Sabbath evening. The servants are thus released the earlier for their evening’s devotions or recreations; the housewife has an opportunity of indulging the father, who is seldom at home at luncheon-time, with dainty wonders of her skill that are not en rÈgle at dinner, and the children have a taste of old-fashioned home-life, the memory of which will be carried by them as long and fondly into their after-lives as I have borne the taste and fragrance of Cousin Melissa’s sage cheese. We do not say “Cousin,” nowadays in polite society, nor christen our children Melissa. You will find elsewhere in this book that I have directed you, as preliminary to frosting fruit for dessert—peaches, apricots and nectarines—first to rub off the down (which makes the softness of the blush) with a rough cloth.

It may be a weakness, but I, for one, like to remember while admiring the pretty conceit of the glacÉ peach, how it looked before it was rubbed bright, and sugar-coated.