Eating in Two or Three Languages

Eating in Two or Three
Languages

Project Gutenberg's Eating in Two or Three Languages, by Irvin S.
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Title: Eating in Two or Three Languages
Author: Irvin S. Cobb
Release Date: June 7, 2006 [EBook #18526]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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TWO OR THREE LANGUAGES ***

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[Illustration: NO RED MEATS, BUT ONLY SEA FOODS]
Eating

in Two or Three
Languages

By
Irvin S. Cobb
Author of "Paths of Glory," "Those Times and These," etc.

New York George H. Doran Company
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
* * * * *
TO
B.B. McALPIN, ESQUIRE,
WHO KNOWS A LOT
ABOUT EATING
* * * * *
ILLUSTRATIONS
No Red Meats, but Only Sea Foods. Frontispiece
"Herb, Stand Back! Stand Well Back to Avoid Being Splashed!"
Half a Dozen Times a Night or Oftener He Travelled under Escort
through the Room

Eating in Two or Three Languages
On my way home from overseas I spent many happy hours mapping
out a campaign. To myself I said: "The day I land is going to be a great
day for some of the waiters and a hard day on some of the cooks.
Persons who happen to be near by when I am wrestling with my first
ear of green corn will think I am playing on a mouth organ. My
behaviour in regard to hothouse asparagus will be reminiscent of the
best work of the late Bosco. In the matter of cantaloupes I rather fancy I
shall consume the first two on the half shell, or au naturel, as we
veteran correspondents say; but the third one will contain about as
much vanilla ice cream as you could put in a derby hat.
[Illustration: "HERB, STAND BACK! STAND WELL BACK TO
AVOID BEING SPLASHED!"]
"And when, as I am turning over my second piece of fried chicken,
with Virginia ham, if H. Hoover should crawl out from under it, and,
shaking the gravy out of his eyes, should lift a warning hand, I shall say
to him: 'Herb,' I shall say, 'Herb, stand back! Stand well back to avoid
being splashed, Herb. Please desist and do not bother me now, for I am
busy. Kindly remember that I am but just returned from over there and
that for months and months past, as I went to and fro across the face of
the next hemisphere that you'll run into on the left of you if you go just
outside of Sandy Hook and take the first turn to the right, I have been
storing up a great, unsatisfied longing for the special dishes of my own,
my native land. Don't try, I pray you, to tell me a patriot can't do his bit
and eat it too, for I know better.
"'Shortly I may be in a fitter frame of mind to listen to your
admonitions touching on rationing schemes; but not to-day, and
possibly not to-morrow either, Herb. At this moment I consider food
regulations as having been made for slaves and perhaps for the run of
other people; but not for me. As a matter of fact, what you may have
observed up until now has merely been my preliminary attack--what
you might call open warfare, with scouting operations. But when they

bring on the transverse section of watermelon I shall take these two
trenching tools which I now hold in my hands, and just naturally start
digging in. I trust you may be hanging round then; you'll certainly
overhear something.'
"'Kindly pass the ice water. That's it. Thank you. Join me, won't you, in
a brimming beaker? It may interest you to know that I am now on my
second carafe of this wholesome, delicious and satisfying beverage.
Where I have lately been, in certain parts of the adjacent continent,
there isn't any ice, and nobody by any chance ever drinks water.
Nobody bathes in it either, so far as I have been able to note. You'll
doubtless be interested in hearing what they do do with it over on that
side. It took me months to find out.
"'Then finally, one night in a remote interior village, I went to an
entertainment in a Y.M.C.A. hut. A local magician came out on the
platform; and after he had done some tricks with cards and