the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the
tenderloin still in its place; and imagine that the angel
also adds a great cup of American home-made coffee,
with a cream a-froth on top, some real butter, firm and
yellow and fresh, some smoking hot-biscuits, a plate
of hot buckwheat cakes, with transparent syrup--could
words describe the gratitude of this exile?

The European dinner is better than the European breakfast,
but it has its faults and inferiorities; it does not satisfy.
He comes to the table eager and hungry; he swallows his
soup--there is an undefinable lack about it somewhere;
thinks the fish is going to be the thing he wants
--eats it and isn't sure; thinks the next dish is perhaps
the one that will hit the hungry place--tries it,
and is conscious that there was a something wanting
about it, also. And thus he goes on, from dish to dish,
like a boy after a butterfly which just misses getting
caught every time it alights, but somehow doesn't get caught
after all; and at the end the exile and the boy have fared
about alike; the one is full, but grievously unsatisfied,
the other has had plenty of exercise, plenty of interest,
and a fine lot of hopes, but he hasn't got any butterfly.
There is here and there an American who will say he can remember
rising from a European table d'ho^te perfectly satisfied;
but we must not overlook the fact that there is also here
and there an American who will lie.

The number of dishes is sufficient; but then it is such
a monotonous variety of UNSTRIKING dishes. It is an inane