HUMOURS OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1626, 29 April 1903, Page 59

HUMOURS OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE

THE BOISTEROUS BREAK F ASTER

People do not behave in the same way ac breakfast as at other mentis, and though at dinner their moods may be practically indistinguishable —1 lie states of mind of diners, that is, do not vary — at breakfast they conduct themselves ns differently as possible. There are some people, for instance, who are in offensively high spirits in the morning; in a state of health, in short, winch really is rightly described as rude. You can hear them coming downstairs, no matter how far the stairs are away from tho dining-room, after slamming their bedroom doors with a resounding bang. They open tho dining-room door as n they were pursued by a policeman and probably slap their male friends on the back in an extremely provocative manner. During breakfast itself, while consuming great quantities of all kinds of food, they comment loudly on the small appetites of others, and insist upon drawing the attention of those who clearly wish to eat very little presence of everything which is edible in tho room. They appear to be perfectly unconscious of the amount of suffering which their splendidly healthy habits inflict upon other persons off less robust ■constitutions and are only able to suggest in answer to possible .complaints of a headache, that the complainant should resort to the particular dishes of which they have themselves eaten, and which they invariably describe as “quite excellent.” THE DEPRESSED BREAKFASTED. If the frame of mind of the rude and boisterous breakfaster is one extreme, the other extreme is the mental state of the man who goes through the meal in a condition oi profound depression. He glances vaguely and uucomprehenclingly at a succession of dish&s, eventually taking the smallest possible amount of the dish that it is easiest to get on with. He does not speak unless someone speaks to him, when he either answers shortly and sadly, or, more often, with obviously forced merriment and inconsequent laughter. Or- —and perhaps this variant of the breakfast state of mind is a more striking antithesis to the rudely boisteious —his unbalanced mental attitude may be one of suppressed fjary. IMen have been known who every morning of their lives hold a kind of review of their acquaintances and friends, and in some cases of those whom they employ. They occupy the breakfast hour m passing, so to speak, down the front and rear ranks, and in trenchantly summing up the habits and qualifications of every' man reviewed, ending in each case with the verdict that ‘‘he is an ass.” Probably he is nothing of the kind; later in the day, indeed, he may be endowed with all the virtues, but from eight o’clock in the morning until ten he possesses for the furious breakfaster no characteristics except those of the idiot, or, in exceptional cases, of th© professional robber. Of course, between the extremes of the rudely boisterous and the profoundly depressed or trenchantly furious breakfast states of mind there are others less definite. THE SOLO BREAKFASTER. The curious case came under the observation of the present writer of a man who, although in every respect temperate and healthy, did not find himself able to breakfast until everyone else had finished. He was accustomed to get- up at the same time as everyone else, hut knowing that others staying in the same house were breakfasting in the ordinary way downstairs, ne would pace up and down his room, waiting until a footman, specially instructed, brought in the news that breakfast was over. He would then enter the dining room with an excellent appetite, which, however failed him completely should any fellow guest by chance return to the room. But nothing, in any case, exhausted his patience; if it happened that a late riser remained at the breakfast table half an hour longer than the rest, he accepted the situation with complete equanimity; nor, upon any consideration. would he consent to breakfast in bis own room, or anywhere else except at a deserted table. There are other and more or LESS COMPREHENSIBLE STATES OF MIND, as, for instance, the dislike which some persons have of watching other people eat porridge; the unhappiness which possesses some breakf asters, usually journalists, unless they are allowed to to walk up and down the room m silence; the extreme difficulty which

some men find in breakfasting in a loom m which there is a looking-glass; and the strange mental condition which, at w hatever time they may happen to como down to the dining room, impels some persons to but one desire, namely, to get the thing over as soon as possible. “Early or late, winter or yammer, work or holidays, two damns and a cup of tea or coffee —that’s my breakfast/’ was the succinct comment of one who invariably began the day in a quite unnecessary hurry. IF ENGLISHMEN WERE NOT ENGLISHMEN, Iho meeting of the household at the breakfast .table would have ceased to be a custom long ago, or, rather, the custom would never have existed. The Frenchman, recognising that many persons are not at tlieir best early in the morning, refuses to meet his fellows at a meal until mid-day. The Englishman seems to insist, although as an individual ho does not always like it, that everybody shall wake up early, and get up early, and to that doim properly he makes everybody oat early and together. The consequence is the breakfast state of mind, as to which it is satisfactory to think that there is really no moral of anv kind whatever to he drawn, except, possibly, that, like other things for which tho Englishman suffers, lie brings it on himself. — I “The Spectator.” %