It is also a matter of habit.  As a boy I was compelled to eat everything on my plate; and as I grew older I discovered that in our home town it was good manners to leave nothing undevoured and thus pay a concrete tribute to the culinary ability of the hostess.  Be that as it may, I have always liked to eat.  It is almost the only thing left that I enjoy; but, even so, my palate requires the stimulus of gin.  I know that I am getting fat.  My waistcoats have to be let out a little more every five or six months.  Anyhow, if the men did not do their part there would be little object for giving dinner parties in these days when slender women are the fashion.

After the long straight front and the habit back, social usage is frowning on the stomach, hips and other heretofore not unadmired evidences of robust nutrition.  Temperance, not to say total abstinence, has become de rigueur among the ladies.  My dinner companion nibbles her celery, tastes the soup, waves away fish, entree and roast, pecks once or twice at the salad, and at last consumes her ration of ice-cream with obvious satisfaction.  If there is a duck—­well, she makes an exception in the case of duck—­at six dollars and a half a pair.  A couple of hothouse grapes and she is done.

It will be observed that this gives her all the more opportunity for conversation—­a doubtful blessing.  On the other hand, there is an equivalent economic waste.  I have no doubt each guest would prefer to have set before her a chop, a baked potato and a ten-dollar goldpiece.  It would amount to the same thing, so far as the host is concerned.

* * * * *

I had, until recently, assumed with some bitterness that my dancing days were over.  My wife and I went to balls, to be sure, but not to dance.  We left that to the younger generation, for the reason that my wife did not care to jeopardize her attire or her complexion.  She was also conscious of the fact that the variety of waltz popular thirty years ago was an oddity, and that a middle-aged woman who went hopping and twirling about a ballroom must be callous to the amusement that followed her gyrations.

With the advent of the turkey trot and the tango, things have changed however.  No one is too stout, too old or too clumsy to go walking solemnly round, in or out of time to the music.  I confess to a consciousness of absurdity when, to the exciting rhythm of Tres Moutard, I back Mrs. Jones slowly down the room and up again.

“Do you grapevine?” she inquires ardently.  Yes; I admit the soft impeachment, and at once she begins some astonishing convolutions with the lower part of her body, which I attempt to follow.  After several entanglements we move triumphantly across the hall.

“How beautifully you dance!” she pants.

Aged roisterer that I am, I fall for the compliment.  She is a nice old thing, after all!

“Fish walk?” asks she.