Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/79

 I shall get) and the service quick. Pray, gentleman at the other side of the table, eat your soup without making such a noise. Oh, again, do not use toothpicks so often while eating; pray, do not open your mouth so wide, at least to yawn. Who dropped a knife? Whose napkin is that I see here? Oh, what mannerlessness! Is that all the table manners for a people who claim to have leamed etiquette and rites in the olden days? And on the other hand, what cooking! How tasteless, how watery! It always sets my mind to thinking what use to introduce the superficial Western civilization here; what do you say, one hundred years we must have before we can digest it completely. What concerns me here chiefly is how the people’s taste in cooking has declined; is it unrecoverable? Yes, it is unrecoverable indeed. “We are returning to the barbarous states of the Middle Age; oh, how meaningless, when facing the Western dishes; and the cook is no better than the eater himself,” I exclaimed. Rh