Therefore I treasured the memory of this incident and brought it back with me; and I tell it here at some length of detail because I know how grateful my countrywomen will be to get hold of it—­I know how grateful they always are when they learn about a new gastronomical wrinkle.  Mind you, I am not saying that the notion is an absolute novelty here.  For all I know to the contrary, prominent hostesses along the Gold Coast of the United States —­Bar Harbor to Palm Beach inclusive—­may have been serving one lone vegetable as a separate course for years and years; but I feel sure that throughout the interior the disclosure will come as a pleasant surprise.

The directions for executing this coup are simple and all the deadlier because they are so simple.  The main thing is to invite your chief opponent as a smart entertainer; you know the one I mean—­the woman who scored such a distinct social triumph in the season of 1912-13 by being the first woman in town to serve tomato bisque with whipped cream on it.  Have her there by all means.  Go ahead with your dinner as though naught sensational and revolutionary were about to happen.  Give them in proper turn the oysters, the fish, the entree, the bird, the salad.  And then, all by itself, alone and unafraid, bring on a dab of string-beans.

Wait until you see the whites of their eyes, and aim and fire at will.  Settle back then, until the first hushed shock has somewhat abated—­until your dazed and suffering rival is glaring about in a well-bred but flustered manner, looking for something to go with the beans.  Hold her eye while you smile a smile that is compounded of equal parts—­superior wisdom, and gentle contempt for her ignorance—­and then slowly, deliberately, dip a fork into the beans on your plate and go to it.

Believe me, it cannot lose.  Before breakfast time the next morning every woman who was at that dinner will either be sending out invitations for a dinner of her own and ordering beans, or she will be calling up her nearest and best friend on the telephone to spread the tidings.  I figure that the intense social excitement occasioned in this country a few years ago by the introduction of Russian salad dressing will be as nothing in comparison.

This stunt of serving the vegetable as a separate course was one of the things I learned about food during our flittings across Europe, but it was not the only thing I learned—­by a long shot it was not.  For example I learned this—­and I do not care what anybody else may say to the contrary either—­that here in America we have better food and more different kinds of food, and food better cooked and better served than the effete monarchies of the Old World ever dreamed of.  And, quality and variety considered, it costs less here, bite for bite, than it costs there.