. A tour around the world by General Grant. Being a narrative of the incidents and events of his journey . s we had chopsticks, with which some ofthe party made interesting experiments in the way of searchingout ragout and soup dishes. At each of the tables were one ortwo of our Chinese friends, and we were especially fortunate athaving with us a Chinese officer who spoke English well, havinglearned it at the mission school of Dr. Hopper. The custom in China is not to give you a bill of fare overwhich you can meditate, and if the dinner has any resourceswhatever compose a minor dinner of your
. A tour around the world by General Grant. Being a narrative of the incidents and events of his journey . s we had chopsticks, with which some ofthe party made interesting experiments in the way of searchingout ragout and soup dishes. At each of the tables were one ortwo of our Chinese friends, and we were especially fortunate athaving with us a Chinese officer who spoke English well, havinglearned it at the mission school of Dr. Hopper. The custom in China is not to give you a bill of fare overwhich you can meditate, and if the dinner has any resourceswhatever compose a minor dinner of your own. A servantcomes to each table and lays down a slip of red tea-box paperinscribed with Chinese characters. This is the name of the table was covered with dishes, which remained there duringthe dinner—dishes of everything except bread—sweetmeats andcakes predominating. The courses are brought in bowls andset down in the middle of the table. Your Chinese friend, whosepoliteness is unvarying, always helps you before he helps him-self. He dives his two chopsticks into the smoking bowl and. (647) 648 AROUND THE WORLD. lugs out a savory morsel and drops it on your plate. Then hehelps himself frequently, not troubling the plate, but eatingdirectly from the bowl. If the dish is a dainty sharks fins orbirds nest soup all the Chinese go to work at the same bowland with the same chopsticks, silver and ivory, which were notchanged during the entire dinner, but did service for fish andfowl and sweetmeats. Between each course were cigars or high Chinamen had pipe-bearers with them, and as eachcourse was ended they would take a whiff. But the cigars cameas a relief to the smoking members of the party: for they couldsit and look on and enjoy the spectacle, and have the opera sen-sation of looking- at something new and strange. The cigars,too, were an excuse for not eating, and at a Chinese dinner anexcuse for not eating is welcome. There is no reason in theworld why
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Keywords: ., bookcentury180, bookdecade1870, booksubjectvoyagesaroundtheworld
