we should have currants before Christmas.  So profound is the disappointment of the public at the non-arrival of the currants that explanations have been put in the papers, calling on us to practise the sublime virtue of self-sacrifice, happy in the knowledge that all the currants are needed for invalid soldiers.  But if the currants are needed for soldiers, how comes it that we sometimes find them in the puddings in restaurants?  Those who are concerned for the preservation of home life in this country cannot but be perturbed by the way in which in this matter of currants the scales have been weighted in favour of the restaurant and against the home.  As for jam, the diner in the restaurant rejoices in jam roll while the child in the home labours its way through tapioca pudding.  Is it any wonder if, as the pessimists believe, the English home decays?

Whether as a result of the jam roll or the rare currants in the puddings, it has been unusually difficult to get a table at some of the restaurants since the signing of the Armistice.  No doubt the signing of the Armistice itself had something to do with it.  Christian men, whenever anything epoch-making happens, must have something to eat.  Marriage, the return of a conquering hero, the visit of a great statesman, the birth of Christ—­we find in all these things a reason for calling on the cooks to do their damnedest.  Even the dyspeptic forgets his doctor’s orders in the general excitement and chases oysters down the narrow stairway of his throat with thick soup, follow thick soup with lobster, and lobster with turkey and turkey with a savoury, and the savoury with a pêche Melba, and at the end of it will not reject cheese and a banana, all of this accompanied with streams of liquid in the form of wine coffee and brandy.  I have often wondered why a man should feel gay doing violence to his entrails in this fashion.  I have noticed again and again that he loses a little of his gaiety if the dinner is served slowly enough to give him time to think.  The gay meal, like the farce, must be enacted quickly.  The very spectacle of waiters hurrying to and fro with an air of peril to the dishes quickens the fancy, and the gastric juices flow to an anapæstic measure.  Who does not know what it is to sit through a slow meal and digest in spondees?  One is given time between the courses to turn philosopher—­to meditate becoming a hermit and dining on a bowl of rice in a cave.  Nothing can prevent one from there and then coming to a decision on the matter save a waiter with the eye of a psychoanalyst ready to rush forward at the first sadness of an eyelid and tempt one either with a new dish or with a glass refilled.  “Stay me with flagons; comfort me with apples.”  It is a universal cry.  Our desire is for the banqueting-house.  Perhaps it is not so much that we feel gay as that we are afraid of feeling gloomy.  We have no force within us that will enable us to laugh over a lettuce and become wits on water.